An Image of Lethe
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. When the Ministry invents a way to distinguish between Light and Dark wizards, Harry Potter is one of their first test subjects. His totally unexpected result propels him into the middle of a political conflict over Dark wizards' rights. Updated every Sunday.
1. Rainbow

**Title: **An Image of Lethe

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Eventual Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Bill/Fleur

**Warnings: **Angst, violence, minor character death

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **The Ministry finally has a way to test people for Dark magic and separate the Dark wizards definitively from the rest. Harry Potter undergoes the test, produces an utterly unexpected result, and finds himself swept up in a political conflict that materialized out of nowhere yesterday, it seems: the fight over whether Dark wizards have a right to continue mingling with "normal" society. Updated every Sunday.

**Author's Notes: **This story idea has been brewing in my head for several months. This will probably be a long one, and very political. The title is from a poem, "The Coming of War: Actaeon," by Ezra Pound.

**An Image of Lethe**

_Chapter One-Rainbow_

"I don't know if it's safe," said a woman in front of Harry, a red-haired witch who reminded him for a moment of Molly, bowing her head nervously over her handbag.

"I hear that Harry Potter is here to test it, and that means we can trust it works," said the wizard next to her, stroking his long white beard. And _he _reminded Harry of Dumbledore, at least from the confidence in his voice. Although he thought Dumbledore hadn't sounded so much like a self-satisfied prat.

"Really?" The woman stopped stroking her handbag. "Then that's a good thing."

Harry grinned to himself and moved on. He was in a hooded cloak at the moment, to attract less attention among the crowd surging through Diagon Alley. He was going to test the Ministry's Lightfinder, but he was early, and he wanted a few moments to himself first.

It seemed so long since he'd had a moment to himself.

He leaned against a wall behind him, the wall of Ollivander's as he saw when he looked, and started out at the crowd, and remembered.

* * *

><p>Everyone at Fred's funeral was a crying, emotional mess.<p>

Harry counted himself in that category, but he wasn't as upset as anyone else. How could he be? He'd really liked Fred, thought of him as a friend, but that wasn't the same as a brother or a son. Or even a cousin, he thought, when he glanced at the mass of relatives the Weasleys had invited to the funeral, red-haired aunts and uncles and countless others that Harry thought hadn't even attended Bill and Fleur's wedding.

Or a twin brother.

Harry stayed with George silently when he could. But sometimes George turned around and wanted to talk, and sometimes he seemed to know where he was and sometimes it seemed like he didn't, and Harry never knew what voice was going to come out of his mouth.

"Where's Fred?" he asked once, when other people were winding flowers around the tall headstone that Molly had chosen for her son. They'd had to work to get all the words she wanted carved on it actually carved, Harry remembered.

"He's going to sleep," Harry said quietly. It was the standard response that the Weasleys had used with George, and most of the time, it seemed to work. George subsided and stared at the headstone again.

"I didn't want to lose him," he whispered next, and Harry took George's hand in his own and squeezed tight.

"I know," Harry said. "I'm so sorry." That was sometimes his mantra, especially when he was talking to Ron. He really didn't know what else to say. He hugged and cried with people, and he talked to them, and that was the extent of what he could do about Fred. It ached in him, all the time, that wound that meant the end of Fred. But at least he could still function. At least he knew where he was, unlike George sometimes did.

"It's like-" George said, and paused.

A second later, Harry realized what he was waiting for: Fred's voice to show up and complete his sentence, the way it always did. Harry grabbed George's hand when he started to point at the coffin, and looked carefully to make sure he didn't have his wand. Hermione had concealed George's wand a little while ago, after some...unfortunate incidents.

"He's _gone _and it _hurts_," George said.

"I know," said Harry, and took the flowers from George's hands, floating them over to rest on top of the grave. "I'm so sorry."

* * *

><p>Harry shook his head and glanced at the floating stage the Ministry had set up in front of Florean Fortescue's still-empty shop. No one was on it yet, although a few Ministry workers stood below it, floating up baskets of flowers and the small poles that were needed to support the simple equipment for the Lightfinder test.<p>

Harry worked his hand open and out. Kingsley had called an emergency meeting, not long after the end of the Death Eater trials, to deal with what he called "the Voldemort issue." Harry had gone, fearing that they had discovered some piece of Voldemort surviving, and that he would be expected to deal with it.

But that hadn't been what had happened at all.

* * *

><p>"I know that you don't want to hear this," said Kingsley, setting his hands on the edge of the table and standing up so he loomed over all of them. Well, at least Harry, opposite him at the odd five-sided table, felt loomed at. "But I'm about to speak ill of the dead."<p>

Harry stiffened, and he knew he wasn't the only one who did. Arthur Weasley was probably the most sensitive person in the room, but even the Ministry workers Harry didn't know well had lost lots of people in the war.

"Please don't, Minister," said Arthur tiredly. "The _Daily Prophet _does that enough already."

"It's the dead of the early part of the war that I'm going to speak ill of," said Kingsley, and paused and took a breath as if he needed to reassure himself of that, too. "It's Dumbledore."

Murmurs of surprise flitted around Harry. He blinked and focused harder on Kingsley. It seemed weird that Kingsley would need to do that, but he had to admit, he was curious about what Kingsley would say.

Harry himself wasn't as positive on Dumbledore as all that anymore, not after what he had found out, but he would probably keep that to himself for the time being. There were lots of people who still thought of Dumbledore as a hero, and maybe they needed to go on thinking of him that way. Harry himself was trying to outgrow the need for heroes.

"Dumbledore failed to contain an issue that he should have contained," Kingsley said, and his eyes were very hard. "He defeated Grindelwald. He saw the rise of a Dark Lord. And when he recognized what had happened with Voldemort, then he should have engaged in preventive measures that would have turned him back."

Harry stirred. He did feel it incumbent on him to say something now. "We know that Voldemort was working on a way to make himself immortal, sir," he told Kingsley. "I'm not sure that Dumbledore could have defeated him."

"I didn't mean personally duel him," said Kingsley, and his nostrils flared a little. "He didn't break the back of Grindelwald's movement because of that duel, although it helped. He took a lot of measures that prevented Grindelwald from gaining all the support he would have needed to take over Britain. He should have done the same thing with Voldemort. What made him terrifying? Not just himself. His Death Eaters, and the ideas he spread that appealed to some people. When he started realizing that Tom Riddle had gone Dark, he should have stopped him then, and exposed him the way he was exposing Grindelwald's rhetoric, right from the beginning."

Harry hesitated. He wasn't sure that he had to right to talk about Dumbledore's personal history with Grindelwald.

While he was pondering, other people had leaped into the gap. "Are you saying that you have reports of new Death Eaters?" Arthur's hand was tight on his wand. Harry wasn't surprised. He had grown more militant than ever since Fred's death.

"No," said Kingsley. "What I have, according to the people in the Ministry who were working on such a thing between the first and second wars with Voldemort, is a way to identify Dark wizards. Not only that, but the precise degree to which their Darkness of magic corresponds with the evil of their souls."

Harry was still puzzling that through when Mafalda Hopkirk, one of the people who had proved unexpectedly toughest about sweeping the vestiges of Voldemort's takeover from the Ministry, raised her hand with a little gasp. "You mean that they've finally invented some way to distinguish between Light and Dark magic in a wizard's core?" she whispered.

Kingsley smiled fiercely at her. "Yes. It was theoretical for decades-centuries-but now they've done it. And what's more, they can expose it for the whole world to see." He paused, maybe to let the confused noise die down, and then added, "What's more, they've made a device that can expose how tainted the wizard's soul is because of it. A wizard who's strongly enchanted by the Dark Arts shows darker than someone who's only used the Dark Arts once or twice. And someone who's essentially Dark manifests a differently-colored aura around them than someone who's essentially Light."

Hopkirk clasped her hands. She looked like she was in prayer. Most of the other adults appeared to be in something of the same state. Harry asked the question that was confusing him, because most of the adults expected him to be confused by everything anyway. "So someone who cast the Cruciatus once shows up lighter than someone who cast it lots of times?"

"Yes," said Kingsley. "It's based on a principle of the rainbow. Apparently Muggle science knows a lot about this?" And he looked at Arthur, which made Harry snort a little. Arthur had a fascination with the odds and ends of Muggle culture, but he didn't know much about the science, or some of the inventions he tried to make would actually work.

Then Harry winced, and felt bad about his thoughts. Arthur had turned even more to tinkering with things because Fred had died. If it was giving him comfort, then Harry shouldn't make fun of it.

"I don't know the Muggle science," said Arthur, with the sort of sad dignity he had adopted since Fred's death. "But I know the procession of colors in a rainbow. Everyone can see them. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Are you telling me that the Darker wizards show up as the darker colors? Blue and violet?"

"Yes." Kingsley was smiling, a sort of hungry smile. "Green is the beginning of the Dark colors, or the balance between Dark and Light, if you will. Someone who shows green is beginning to feel the taint, or maybe has had to make some corrupt decisions in situations where the use of Dark spells couldn't be avoided." For a second, Harry was sure that Kingsley was trying to lock eyes with him, but Harry glanced casually aside, and it failed. "It depends on how dark the shade of green is."

"I see, I see," Arthur murmured, sounding as if he really did. Maybe some of the Muggle artifacts he'd had to adjust or take apart contained information about the rainbow, Harry decided. "So there's another reason beyond the symbolism for making it the rainbow. Colors come in so many different shades..."

"That it allows us to determine the amount of Dark and Light magic influencing someone's core even more exactly." Kingsley gave them a grim nod. "I want the rise of the next Dark Lord stopped before it starts, and that depends not only on identifying individual Dark wizards, but identifying the ones most likely to give them support."

"And their power level," said Hopkirk. From the faint awe in her voice, that was the part that most impressed her.

Kingsley snapped his fingers. "I knew I was forgetting to emphasize something. Yes, exactly. The depth of the color, and the color itself, indicates where the wizard stands on the Dark or Light spectrum. The _intensity _of the light reveals their power."

"What about their souls?" Harry asked. He was wondering what would have happened if they'd put Voldemort through the artifact, or test, or whatever it was, with only a shred of his soul in his body. "How does the test track the damage to your soul?"

"The taint to the soul is calculated by the interaction between the intensity of the light and its color," said Kingsley.

Harry nodded, unsure. He was probably only unsure because he knew about Horcruxes, though, he thought. Everyone else seemed to understand it well enough. Soul magic couldn't be that common.

And really, how likely was it that the Ministry would ever test someone who had a Horcrux? Harry was worrying about nothing, a contingency that was unlikely to happen. Since the war, he was doing his best to worry about what was in front of him instead of what he only imagined. That was enough to concern him, anyway.

The discussion swept away into more abstract theoretical concerns that Harry didn't understand and pay much attention to. He thought Kingsley didn't, either, but he must have memorized enough of the information to give soothing answers to the people in his immediate inner circle who _did _know. They sounded reassured by what he was saying, rather than troubled, and that was good enough for Harry.

He only returned with a snap to the conversation when Kingsley turned towards him and said, smiling faintly, "And, of course, just to make sure that the process is working effectively, we need test subjects."

"I volunteered for this when?" Harry asked suspiciously, but rolled his eyes when he saw the way Kingsley smiled at him.

"Turnus, the item's inventor, is trying to get together wizards of every color and level of power," Kingsley explained. "He's having trouble finding someone that he thinks will blaze an intense red. There's absolutely no doubt of you shining like that, of course. You're our icon of the Light."

"Um," said Harry, a little embarrassed.

"The test will be in Diagon Alley on Monday, December 28th," Kingsley said. "You will be there. Don't be late."

And the conversation swept on, and Harry sat back and shook his head. He didn't think Kingsley would subject him to a difficult or painful test on purpose or anything, but he disliked being volunteered for things without his consent.

Then he shrugged. He supposed that was part of being the Boy-Who-Lived that he really couldn't avoid.

* * *

><p>On the stage, the small poles had been set up, and the Lightfinder, a dark silver block with a black stone positioned on top of it, was being laid on top of them. Harry moved forwards. He thought it was time he got on stage.<p>

The pressure of the crowd made it harder to move, though, and so he had plenty of time to study the Lightfinder before he got close enough to mount the steps. The black stone in the center of the silver altar (that was what Turnus called it, and Harry had to admit he could see the reason for the comparison) was perfectly round and smooth. It reminded Harry of what one of Trelawney's crystal balls would have looked like if she had managed to turn it into obsidian.

On the sides of the altar were two places for the wizard's hands to rest, small dimpled indentations. There was a mirror set up on another pole behind the altar, an enchanted one that could reflect the light's color and intensity and hold a perfect image to be called up later, rather like a Pensieve. According to Kingsley, that mirror was the major drawback of the Lightfinder. Each mirror could contain only three memories, and then it would need to be replaced before the tests could continue.

But that was it. Like Kingsley said, it was a pretty simple device to give peace to the wizarding world.

Harry was all in favor, though, and from the slow roar that rose around him when people saw him walk up the steps, so were plenty of others.

Uriel Turnus came to meet him, shaking Harry's hand with one of his own perpetually damp ones. He was a small, squinting, bald man, except for the small fringe of russet hair that dangled down from the sides of his skull, almost hiding his neck. He immediately turned away from Harry to look at the Lightfinder.

"Is that ready, Splinter?" he demanded of one of the wizards fussing around with the exact positioning of the mirror.

"Almost, sir," said that wizard, in a mutter. Harry had seen this wizard, Nathaniel Splinter, before. He seemed to resent Turnus. Harry wondered if Splinter had done some work on the Lightfinder that Turnus had stolen or claimed as his own.

"Good, good," said Turnus, but he waited until the mirror was perfectly in place, and then went over and adjusted it himself, before he faced the crowd and cast the _Sonorus. _Harry flung back his hood so everyone could see him and gave a little wave.

"As all of you know," Turnus announced grandly, "Mr. Harry Potter has agreed to be our first test subject for the Lightfinder. This is a miraculous device that will tell us the _exact _amount of Light or Darkness in a wizard's magic, and the intensity of his power, and the corruption of his soul, and that means..."

Harry let his attention wander. He already knew all this about the Lightfinder, and didn't need to hear it again.

His gaze caught on a small group of cloaked and hooded wizards near the stage. They wore silver masks, he saw, when one turned his head. Harry's eyes narrowed. He wondered if Kingsley had been wrong after all about no more Death Eaters trying to take over where Voldemort had left off.

"And that means that Harry Potter has graciously volunteered to go into the Lightfinder, to show you how it's done!"

No time to worry about Death Eaters, then. Harry doubted they would think to attack in a place as public as this, anyway. He nodded jauntily to whoever was behind those masks, and then turned and stepped up onto the tiny platform mounted behind the altar with the stone.

He settled his hands into the indentations, with Turnus fussing around him as if this was an enormously complicated process that Harry would somehow mess up. Harry gave the crowd another smile and tried to listen as patiently as possible to Turnus.

"Make sure the mirror can see you...can reflect you...the stone needs to be under your chin..."

Harry moved his head forwards a little and flapped his eyebrows at the crowd. Several people laughed. If that would disrupt the Lightfinder, Turnus didn't appear to notice, although Splinter, standing over to the side, scowled.

"There," said Turnus, and stepped back. "Now all you need to do is look down into the stone."

Harry did that, his eyes tracing carefully along the smooth, glossy surface. Still he saw nothing that would mar it. He wondered if a flash of light would come out of the surface to take his picture like a camera.

Nothing so visible, he realized a moment later. There was a pull, like someone gripping the skin of his cheeks and tugging. Before Harry could even raise his hands from the places they were supposed to stay to object, the sensation stopped, and a flash of light did cut the air as the aura around his body became visible.

Harry heard the gasps, the growing screams, before he turned around and looked at himself in the mirror.

But that still didn't prepare him for what he saw.

The aura surrounding his body was a deep, royal _blue, _tinted with black at the edges.

* * *

><p>"Draco? What does this mean? Draco?"<p>

It was Pansy's voice, harsh and insistent in his ear. Draco half-shook his head, unable to take his eyes from Potter glowing like a supernova, his face sweating behind the silver mask that allowed him to appear in public unmolested.

But he didn't shake his head because he didn't know the answer to her question. He did, and he used the growing shrieks of the mob to cover his voice as he turned and whispered to her.

"It means we might have a chance, after all."


	2. Lethe

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Lethe_

Harry sat with his head between his hands in the isolation room at St. Mungo's. Now and then, someone yelled or yelped off in the distance, but their voices were immediately folded into the fierce murmur of arguments between Healers and Ministry flunkies and Unspeakables and Aurors and all the other people who had come flooding onto the stage a scant moment after the Lightfinder found—

_My Darkness?_

Harry shifted uneasily, not looking up. He supposed he should have remembered casting the Unforgivables, but he hadn't thought it would taint him _that _much. Maybe enough to turn his aura green.

Not blue. Not fading out so close to other dark colors at the edges. He must be more tainted than he knew. Was this about having the kind of hatred that had let him cast the Cruciatus Curse? Or maybe it was because he had cast the Cruciatus Curse without thinking about it much, on someone who had spat at McGonagall.

He didn't know, and as he shuddered and the door opened, he didn't know if he would find out.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry looked up. The voice sounded only a little familiar, and that was surprising. He had thought they would send Kingsley in to talk to him.

But instead, it was Nathaniel Splinter, the resentful wizard who had helped set up the Lightfinder. He came to a stop inside the door and stared at Harry with cold grey eyes, looking as uncomfortable as Harry felt. A second later, he edged to the side and used his wand to slide a chair forwards from against the wall, sitting down in it as if he wanted to spring up at any second.

"Listen, Potter," he said. "You have to be wondering how Dark you are right now, and what the Lightfinder picked up on."

Since that was exactly what Harry was wondering, he nodded a little, eyes fastened on Splinter as he shifted among several different positions, none of which seemed to affect the stick he had up his arse.

"The problem is, they're not going to tell you," said Splinter, jerking his head out the door. He seemed to realize it was open then, and spelled it shut. The loud voices got a little quieter. "They don't know the exact limitations of the Lightfinder. They don't know enough _about _it." His voice was as sour now as some of Dumbledore's lemon sweets. "But I do, and I know that you have a taint on your soul." He peered at Harry. "Not the kind that comes from casting some Dark Arts, either."

Harry stiffened, and from the faint smile Splinter gave him, he hadn't missed it. But Harry didn't know how he could possibly tell anyone about the Horcruxes, so he played as dumb as he could. "But what else is there? Besides murder and torture. And I only tortured people through spells."

"_Only_," said Splinter, in a mocking way. "Some of us managed to avoid that even during the war, you know."

Harry folded his arms and stared him down. "You won't convince me to cooperate with you if you keep picking at me like that."

"Fuck, you're right," said Splinter, and ran a hand through his hair. "Fuck, I'm sorry."

Harry blinked and nodded, and waited. There had to be some reason Splinter had come to talk to him, and from the way he was acting, it wasn't with the blessing of his superiors. Harry hoped that he wasn't about to be caught up in some Ministry intrigue. He knew that the taint on his soul meant his actions were fairly straightforward: he had to atone, somehow. The Healers and the rest of them were arguing about the Lightfinder, whether it was right, and the impact on society, not what Harry had to do.

Splinter took a deep breath and spoke the words all at once. Harry thought at first he'd mistaken what Splinter said because he wanted it to be true so much. "I know a way to remove the Darkness from your magical core."

Harry sat straight up. He could feel his lips tingling as though he'd bitten into a gooseberry. "You know that?" he demanded in a hushed tone. "Then why haven't you told other people? Kingsley didn't tell _me. _That would have been all over the papers the minute someone started talking about the Lightfinder!"

"Hush, okay?" Splinter darted a nervous glance over his shoulder at the door. "We haven't told anyone because—well, we're not sure that this is going to work. But I did most of the enchantments that make the Lightfinder function. Not that Tumnus wants to give me credit for my work, the bastard."

_So I was right. _"Fine, but what is this thing? How does it work? What's it called?"

"It's called," said Splinter, sitting up and pronouncing the words as carefully as though Harry might need to put them in a Pensieve to use in a trial someday, "Lethe."

Harry blinked. "Like the river that makes you forget everything?"

Splinter nodded, seeming a bit annoyed. Perhaps he had wanted to explain the origin of the name to Harry himself. "Yes. Exactly like that."

Harry thought about it. It wasn't a very encouraging name. "What does it do?"

"It scrubs your magical core of the Darkness. Your soul of the taint." Splinter gestured insistently with one hand, which fluttered down to land on his knee like a bird. "It's really nothing more than the same principles that make the Lightfinder work, except they've been turned backwards in Lethe. It makes your core forget the Darkness that infected it."

Harry hesitated. "Would I forget casting the Unforgivables and—and doing whatever else made my core that Dark?" It was probably best to let Splinter assume it was something Harry had done, rather than something done to him.

Splinter shook his head, eyes intense. "The memories remain to you. But memories have been proven to play no part in influencing your magical core. The taint is gone. Like that." He snapped his fingers. "Of course, I can't promise what will happen if you go out and commit those same acts all over again."

"I have no intention of ever doing anything like that again," Harry said fervently. "So. Can we go and do this?"

"That's the hard part." Splinter sat back and regarded him with heavy-lidded eyes. "Lethe hasn't received as much testing as the Lightfinder, because they're more interested in finding Dark wizards than curing them." Harry had to smile a little. Yes, that sounded like the Ministry. "It needs some more testing before it's safe, and some more publicity. Now that everyone's seen you have a Dark core, they won't understand if it just disappears. I was hoping you could help me tell people about it and promote it, because you want to undergo the testing."

Harry hesitated once. It was the kind of work that he wasn't very enthusiastic about doing, because he didn't like to use the power of his name and because he didn't like public attention.

On the other hand, he had gone along with Kingsley's silly request to test the Lightfinder in public, and look where _that _had got him.

He nodded, his mind made up. "Do I have to contact you secretly? Or will the Ministry let us meet and talk about this?"

"They'll let you speak to me in public if you're confident enough," said Splinter. "Right now, they don't know what to do with you. I listened to their conversation out there." He jerked his head at the door, his ragged hair flying. "They want this never to have happened, but they don't know what to _do_."

Harry snorted. And that also sounded like the Ministry. "Then I'll go out there and tell them that I want to help you test Lethe."

"Thank you," said Splinter, standing up with his eyes glowing. "_Thank _you. I promise that we'll make this safe before we test it on you, and then lots of other people will see that they can be cured of their Darkness, too, and the Lightfinder isn't a death sentence."

Harry nodded absently. He was starting to wonder about some of the things that the _Daily Prophet _had discussed. The reporters had babbled excitedly about how, now that the Ministry would _know _who was Dark and who was Light, Dark wizards could be given extra prison sentences, kept out of Hogwarts, put in a special isolation ward at St. Mungo's, and so on.

Harry hadn't thought about it much at the time because it seemed so distant, so unlikely to happen, so silly.

But now that it might be going to happen to _him_, he was thinking about it.

* * *

><p>Draco sat in silence before the fireplace in his room for a long, long time, thinking about how to write a letter to Potter.<p>

Two years ago, this wouldn't have troubled him. He would have just scribbled down his demands, attached them to an owl, and sent the owl on its way. If he had even thought it worthwhile to appeal to Potter at all, that was.

But now, with the Manor taken from his family, with his father in prison, with the money he had counted on cut off, and the papers threatening consequences for testing Dark the way Draco knew he would…

Potter might be capable of turning public opinion around if he was going to appear as a Dark wizard. It would be a contest between the wizarding world's frantic hatred of the Dark and their love of their Savior, but Draco thought it at least a better chance than any he'd seen so far of someday having a normal life again.

The door opened, and Draco started, gripping his wand. Pansy stepped inside and shut the door behind her, shaking her head.

"Astoria just got back from the Ministry," she murmured. "They said they were willing to put her name at the bottom of the list since her family didn't actually harm anyone during the war, but they were going to test her just the same."

"Shit," Draco whispered, appalled. He and Pansy had been hiding in this little house-a gift to Astoria years ago from a wealthy aunt-since Pansy had been sentenced _in absentia _for wanting to turn Potter over to the Dark Lord during the war and Draco had become homeless and penniless and his mother had vanished Merlin knew where. They had thought they'd be safe here, at least until they could scrape up enough money to leave the country. The Greengrasses had been Slytherins but not Death Eaters, and no one outside Draco's small circle of friends knew that his parents had talked about him marrying Astoria someday.

But Astoria was still Dark, and if she went in front of the Lightfinder and the restrictions they were talking about actually happened…

They would lose even this modest sanctuary.

That decided Draco, as nothing else could have done. He felt himself sitting up in his chair, and Pansy, who always huddled lately as if to hide the height she had once been so proud of, eyed him curiously. Draco nodded to her.

"I think we have to do this," Draco told her. "I know it's humiliating, but it's less humiliating than running from place to place for the rest of our lives."

"That might not happen," said Pansy, her face breaking out in the hectic flush that meant she was nervous. "The _Daily Prophet _always reports whatever it thinks makes a good story, but that doesn't mean they're actually going to strip everything away from Astoria."

"I know," said Draco. "But do you want to spend the rest of your life in some secret room in her house?"

Pansy closed her eyes. "No."

Draco nodded. "I don't either. Even if I married her." And he thought marrying Astoria was probably out of the question now, since her family wouldn't want her allied with such a political liability. He wondered if Astoria was relieved about that or not. He didn't know her all that well.

"I just don't think that writing to Potter is going to solve the problem," Pansy said abruptly. "He hates you, he hates me, he hates everyone he might be able to help. He'll probably just say that he's not like all those _other _Dark wizards, and people will focus more on you and your escape from justice."

Her voice was scathing on those last words, and Draco couldn't help giving her a grateful look. He had complied with the regulations the Ministry had forced on him, since he'd had no choice, but evidently they wanted him to spend all his time hovering in Diagon Alley looking pathetic. The minute he had Apparated away from the Ministry, the _Daily Prophet _had started trumpeting that it was an "escape," and that story had been front-page news every day until they started talking about the Lightfinder.

Draco had been willing to go into hiding at first, to escape the publicity. And Pansy was with him, and Blaise knew where he was, and while Draco hadn't had time to tell his mother, he was confident she could figure it out. Astoria's house didn't have the luxury of the Manor, but it was dry and warm, with books and good food and house-elves.

But now…

When he thought of that blue-black aura shining around Potter's body, Draco didn't want to stay hidden. In a world where the Savior could look like that, Draco thought he ought to be able to demand more. They wouldn't lock up Potter, would they? Or they could try, but with the insane way the public's opinion swung back and forth on him, he was just as likely to be out tomorrow. Draco thought that talking to him was at least a plan with sense behind it.

Someone knocked on the door. Draco tensed up, and Pansy reached for her wand. But it was Astoria who flung it open and stepped inside a second later. She sounded winded when she talked.

"Draco. You _have _to see this."

Draco exchanged a glance with Pansy when he realized that Astoria was carrying a newspaper in her hand, but Pansy only shook her head. Draco took the paper from her and held it so that Pansy could read over his shoulder.

It wasn't the _Daily Prophet _after all, but the _Daily Hunter, _a paper started after the war, with a logo of a stalking nundu after prey. The photograph on the front page was the familiar one of Potter standing in front of the Lightfinder, his aura surrounding him, but the headline was news.

_POTTER TO RID HIMSELF OF DARKNESS!_

And there was an article beneath that that Draco skimmed fast, enough to read about Potter and Splinter and a machine called Lethe that would pare away the Darkness in someone's core somehow. It made Draco's chest cold to read about it.

He handed the newspaper to Pansy when he was done with it, since she always liked to read depressing things in more detail than he did, and leaned back with his hands over his face, taking deep breaths. He didn't think for one moment that even if a cure for Dark wizards existed, he and Pansy would be allowed to take it. Either it would be expensive, or they would be arrested the minute they appeared.

And Draco wasn't sure that he wanted to do it, anyway. He was a Dark wizard, and it was because of the affinity he had for Dark Arts, not what he had actually done. That was the way it was.

On the other hand, if Potter took the cure, there would be no way to convince him to fight for their rights. He wouldn't be a Dark wizard if he could pop into some machine like the Lightfinder and get the Darkness cut or burned or whatever out of his magical core. One thing Draco had noticed was that the article was fairly vague on what exactly Lethe was.

"What are we going to do?"

Pansy's voice was dull, and it roused Draco like few things could have. He turned around and took her hand, staring sternly into her eyes. "We're going to write to Potter, and we're going to show him that he has people to save and protect," he said.

Pansy's face spasmed, and she looked away. "He won't want to save and protect me."

"You know those newspaper stories about Potter going into the Forbidden Forest and dying? Well, surviving the Killing Curse a second time?" Draco still wasn't sure why that had happened, but he was sure it had. Potter had given interviews about it, and the stories were remarkably consistent from source to source.

And more, Draco had an eyewitness in his mother, who had told him that she thought Potter had walked into the clearing where the Dark Lord stood not expecting to survive. An excellent observer, his mother.

"What about them?" Pansy gave him another look from eyes as flat as a doll's.

"He did it for everyone," said Draco. "Everyone in the school. Or the wizarding world, take your pick. That includes people like us that he doesn't like a lot and people like his fans that he doesn't know at all. We'd still have to persuade him to help us because he doesn't like us and he wants to stop being a Dark wizard, but at least we know that he might do it because he did it once before."

"Let me get this straight," said Pansy, and Draco was glad to see some life return to her face even if it wasn't with the tone of voice he would have preferred. "Potter is going to save us because he's a hero."

"Yes," said Draco.

"The hero that all through school, you insisted he wasn't." Draco would have said something, but Pansy took a breath and went on. "And he's going to do it through the special treatment that you insisted he didn't deserve."

Draco scowled at the floor.

"I can't heeeeear you," Pansy crooned, cupping one hand around her ear.

"I said that yes, those are exactly the reasons that I'm depending on him to save us," Draco snapped, and turned back to composing his letter, ignoring her cackle. At least she was in a better mood now, and that was something to treasure.

Draco wanted to save himself. He wanted, if at all possible, his old life back, and to live freely in the wizarding world. He wasn't going to crouch in a tiny room for the rest of his life. He could live hundreds of years, how could he do that?

But he also wanted Pansy safe. And Blaise, who was still in the public eye and living in his own house but receiving more and more attention from the agents of the Ministry every day. And Astoria, who had taken a great risk for them and lingered now by the door with her knuckles in her mouth, eyes watching his every move.

In the end, he thought that might be why Potter would help him, if he decided to. Maybe he would be less sympathetic to Draco's love for his family since he'd never had parents and had been enemies with Draco's father, but he would understand the desire to protect his friends.

Draco hoped so, anyway.

* * *

><p>Harry sank wearily into a chair. After a moment, he managed to wave his wand and cast the spell that would start the fire. Then he leaned back and stared at the deep purples and reds of the overstuffed furniture swallowing all the light in this room of Grimmauld Place.<p>

He had moved to Grimmauld Place the day after the debacle with the Lightfinder and the official proclamation that he was Dark. Harry knew Kingsley had made the proclamation reluctantly, but he had to. Anyone who went through the Lightfinder had to be designated Light or Dark, and there was no ignoring the way Harry's aura had appeared around him.

Anyway, predictably, a couple of his neighbors had said that they felt uncomfortable with Harry living next to them. And Kingsley knew he had another house and suggested he go to that. And even Splinter had said that maybe Harry would feel better with Dark surroundings, in a house owned by a family who had practically reveled in the taint on their souls.

_He's trying to help, _Harry reminded himself about Splinter as he shut his eyes. _He's just tactless sometimes._

It had been almost a week since Splinter had approached him to start working on Lethe, two days since they'd gone public outside the Ministry. Harry thought he must have answered every variation of the question, "But you're Dark, why would you want to be Light?" under the sun.

He had been unwise enough to answer one version with, "Well, why wouldn't I? Being Light is better, and I won't get locked up that way."

The reporter had been whisked away while Aurors and Unspeakables descended on the crowd, and Kingsley had explained tersely to Harry afterwards that he didn't want Harry fueling the rumors about Dark wizards being locked up and having all their possessions taken away. They would simply be isolated for a time while the best course of action was decided on.

_Right, _Harry thought, and felt about three thousand years old in terms of cynicism.

He really shouldn't. The Ministry had been a lot better to him since the war, hadn't demanded much of him, and Kingsley was a friend. And if all went as well as Splinter said it should, now that they had donations pouring in for Lethe, Harry ought to be free of his Darkness in a few months' time, anyway. The instant he was done in Lethe, Kingsley had promised, he could have another test in front of the Lightfinder. This time, Kingsley was sure he would blaze red.

_But that's what he thought the first time, too._

Harry sighed. His thoughts went round and round, blaming the Ministry, excusing them, blaming and excusing himself, wondering if he was evil, wondering if Voldemort had left such a taint on him that he would never be clean again, wanting to be free, wanting to leave everyone who said that he was evil far behind. He wouldn't get much rest tonight if he let the whirl start up again.

He was just standing to go to bed when an owl hooted next to him. Harry started and turned around. He was sure that he had enchantments on the walls strong enough to hold back any owl who wanted to get through.

But this one hopped confidently up to him and presented the letter. Harry glared at it suspiciously, then cast the necessary detection spells on the letter. Nothing appeared dangerous, even the one he specifically cast for bubotuber pus.

Then he carefully opened the letter, and stared at it.

_Potter. _

_I'm writing to ask you not to go into Lethe and cleanse yourself just yet. I know that you don't want to hear it, but you could be a powerful fighter for Dark wizards' rights if you spoke up and asked people to treat them well. I have friends in danger, along with myself, and I really want to meet with you._

_Draco Malfoy._

The world, Harry abruptly decided, was utterly crazy, and he was going to go to bed and only deal with this in the morning.

No matter _how _much the owl hopped up and down next to him and hooted pathetically for attention.


	3. Writing Back

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Writing Back_

The problem with going to bed and trying to forget about Malfoy's letter, Harry discovered, was that the letter was still there when he got up the next morning. And so was Malfoy's owl, standing asleep on the perch in the corner that Harry would have got rid of if not for Pig.

Harry scowled and went to make toast and tea, his usual breakfast, shaking his head. He didn't understand how Malfoy's owl had got to him when his wards should have prevented it.

Then he remembered something, and nearly groaned aloud. _Right. _The house was still open to someone of Black blood, as they had discovered when they started repairing the wards after the war. They were just lucky that Bellatrix had never found her way to Grimmauld Place when she was still alive; she could have walked right in.

And it was the same thing with Malfoy's owl, since he had the bad taste to have a Black mother. Harry scowled at the bird, and it opened its eyes and hooted at him.

"Yeah, yeah, you stupid bird," Harry muttered, and he set the tea to boiling and went over to scribble a rough reply on the back of Malfoy's letter. There was plenty of room, since the actual letter was so short, and he didn't want to go and find more parchment and ink.

_Malfoy,_

_I don't know what you mean, and I don't think I really want to know. What I know is that I tested Dark because I've done some reprehensible things, and they're trying to cure me with the Lethe. If you don't want to go through the test and the cure, don't. But I want to be free of this taint that I inflicted on myself._

He didn't bother signing it; surely Malfoy would know who it came from. And the owl swooped over and snatched it from his fingers and flew merrily through the open window before he could write more, anyway.

Harry watched it go, sighed massively, and turned back to his breakfast. He was due for another interview at eleven today; the testing Lethe was going through was in part a requirement for attuning it to his soul and magical core. But they needed the information about his past and memories and preferences and all the rest if they were going to attune it to him.

_And what are you going to do about the fact that you refuse to talk about the Horcrux? _

Harry hunched his shoulders. He was trying to gather up the courage to talk about it, honestly he was. The problem was that he didn't know who might take that knowledge and think it was a great idea to make some more Horcruxes and try to become immortal. The Department of Mysteries, along with the Ministry in general, was full of the people who had come up with machines like the Lightfinder and Lethe, after all.

Harry paused a second later, shocked at himself. _You mean, the people who came up with the machine that's going to help you and the one that let you know you had a problem in the first place? _

He swallowed a bit of toast that tasted ashy, his breath quick and shallow. Splinter had warned him that he might have thoughts like this, ones that told him there was nothing wrong with being Dark and resenting the very existence of the Lightfinder and Lethe. It was a little harder to resist them, Splinter had said. It must be much harder than Harry had thought. He nearly hadn't noticed that one.

Apparently Dark wizards had intrusive thoughts telling them that things were okay or wrong all the time, things that ordinary people would see as evil or normal, and that was one reason they went ahead with their crimes.

Harry's hands shook as he put away the breakfast dishes and went in to have a shower. He had thought of himself as an unfortunate victim up until this point, someone with a tainted magical core that really didn't want to have it.

But what if part of him was the same as the wizards who had killed his parents and his godfather and Cedric and Fred and so many others? What if he became like them because he wasn't taking the danger seriously enough?

Harry decided he wanted to go to the interview early. He had some questions of his own to ask, as well as answer.

* * *

><p>Draco dipped his toast in a pool of melted butter and deliberately ate it, eyes fastened on the words that Potter had written back to him.<p>

"Let me guess. He refused."

Draco didn't bother acknowledging Pansy verbally, but did hand her the letter. She picked it up and read it through, then began to bite one of her nails as she flung the letter on the table. A moment later, she was stalking back and forth in Astoria's dining room, the biggest room in the house.

_And the dimmest, _Draco thought with a frown, and added more wood to the fire blazing directly behind him.

"What are we going to _do_?" Pansy moaned, burying her head in her hands.

"Not succumb to despair, for one thing," said Draco, and hid a smile as she glared at him. Pansy angry was always easier to deal with than Pansy weak and curling up around her stomach and feeling sorry for herself.

"Yes, because that's a _plan_," said Pansy, and folded her arms. "What exactly do you think we should do, now that Potter refused your flattering invitation?"

Draco smiled at her. "The kind of thing he would expect Dark wizards to do. It's not like we're going to damage our reputation further with either him or the Ministry."

Pansy stared at him mistrustfully. "And you think kidnapping him or killing him would accomplish—what, exactly?"

Draco had to laugh this time, and never mind the way she bristled up like a wet Kneazle. "Not _that_. What a limited view of Dark wizards you _do _have. No, we're going to make sure that he knows some of the blackmail material we have on hand."

"I must have another limited view of Dark wizards, because I don't know that we have any blackmail material on Potter." Pansy put her hands on her hips and regarded him expectantly.

"We have rumors at our disposal that we can spread," Draco said. "The general public is set to go off like a whole forest full of dead tinder, you know that. All we have to do is start circulating rumors that Potter practices secret Dark rituals or something, and they'd flare up against him."

"But that would ultimately hurt us," said Pansy. "They would only start hunting Dark wizards even more strongly then."

"That's why I really don't want to do it," Draco admitted. "But I can hold the threat in reserve over Potter's head."

"What else?" Pansy looked fascinated when Draco reached down and laid a hand against his chest, over his heart.

"There's also the secret Dark spell that Potter attacked me with in the bathroom at Hogwarts," said Draco.

"Are they going to care about him cursing someone who's a fugitive?"

"Oh, yes," said Draco. He'd read the newspaper articles in more detail than Pansy, at least at the beginning of this whole stupidity; he skimmed them more often now because of how often they repeated each other. "Especially, like I said, if the rumors don't seem to come from me, but from someone else who's still in good standing. They're rabid for any notion of wrongdoing, any of this taint on the soul business. Did you notice how much they're digging up about the Unforgivable Curses that Potter used during the war? It doesn't matter that he mostly used them on Death Eaters. And I think Potter himself is afraid." Draco tapped the letter he'd got back. "Otherwise, he would have at least agreed to meet with me, if he was fighting for the Light or if he was curious or reacting normally. Or he would have reported the letter to someone else."

"You think he didn't?"

"I think the fact that no one tracked the owl back speaks for itself."

Pansy sank against the wall, gnawing on her lip contemplatively. "You're putting an awful lot of trust in inferences that you're picking up from—what? The shape of the letters? Your knowledge of Potter's psychology?"

"Hope," Draco said softly. "And all of that." He caught her eye. "If they can accuse _him_ and bring him down, Pansy, then what chance do the rest of us have? I'm fighting a battle that might be doomed, but I can't not fight it. And I think he's still our best chance."

"If he's so vulnerable to blackmail, then I don't see why."

"If he would stand up and _fight _for once, if he had someone at his side who knows how to manipulate newspaper people, then he'd be doing a lot better." Draco moved a hand impatiently. "He would swing people back to his side. He could make a difference in the Ministry just blindly using the Lightfinder and the rest of the sheep as blindly trusting them."

"You hope."

"Yes, all of that." Draco clenched his hands on his lap to keep from shouting at her. "I think we _might _do this. Do you have a better idea?"

"No," said Pansy, after a long minute of thinking.

Draco softened, and stood up to catch her hand and kiss it. "I know you would tell me if you did," he whispered. "It's—frustrating. I know that. But we have to do what we can to make it less frustrating. It won't do any good if we give up and sit here waiting for them to capture us."

It took a long moment, but Pansy finally nodded with her eyelids drooping over her eyes and made some soft, subtle noise that sounded like, "I know."

* * *

><p>"I don't know, Harry."<p>

Harry looked in a little pity at Hermione, who was sitting bent over another list of interview questions. He'd spent almost an hour talking about his childhood and his favorite colors and his Sorting into Gryffindor—that had really interested the note-takers, who thought the Hat's longing to Sort him into Slytherin could be an early sign of Dark tendencies—and his favorite clothes and his relationship with Ginny. Now he and Hermione had a brief thirty minutes for lunch, and to prepare for the next interview. And as a gesture of trust, the room they were in didn't have any enchantments to prevent him from getting out, except a simple shield on the door that would warn them if anyone used Dark spells inside these four walls. And there were no listening spells, either.

That was why Harry had dared to ask Hermione if she thought he should tell people about Horcruxes.

But she looked up now, and her face was nearly as bleak and bare as the stone walls behind her, which bore no decorations of any kind that could be harmed or turned into weapons. "It's such a risk," she whispered. "But what they're doing to you is horrendous, too. If they could understand the most likely reason that you have a tainted soul…wouldn't it be worth it?"

Harry sighed and kicked a little, then poked at the cheese sandwich in front of him. Lunch was always cheese sandwiches, because Splinter was the only one who volunteered to come into contact with Harry on a regular basis, and he didn't know how to cook much. "I was the one who volunteered for the Lightfinder, Hermione. I'm the one volunteering for Lethe. How can it be horrendous if I agreed to let them do it to me?"

Hermione's mouth tightened. Then she said in an even tighter voice, "What if you agreed, but other people don't?"

Harry blinked at her in surprise. "I don't think they would want to put someone unwilling through Lethe. It would mess up their results, Splinter said."

"What results do they have right now?" Hermione gestured violently enough to almost spill the glass of water on the tray they'd brought Harry. "They don't have _anything!_ And you're going along with them and this thing that could be a horrible mistake!" She rose to her feet and circled around the table towards Harry, who stared at her. He hadn't thought she would oppose his going into Lethe when she had gone along with it so far.

But now Hermione bent down in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders with tears in her eyes. "Harry, _please _don't do this. You won't know what it really does until they test it—and they can test it all they like on magical illusions and so on, but you know _they don't have souls_. They're going to make you the first one to do this again, the only one who should, the way they acted like you were the only one who should fight Voldemort!" She spat a piece of hair out of the corner of her mouth and went on. "They don't know what will happen! They don't know anything about what the Lightfinder really shows, either!"

"They know it shows the taint on the soul!" Harry snapped, and grabbed one of her hands and moved it off his shoulder. It was hurting him. "And you have better reason than almost anyone to know why I should have a taint there!"

Hermione closed her eyes and stood there for a second, panting. Then she opened them again, and Harry flinched back from her gaze.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered. "You were refusing some of their requests right after the war, even the ones Kingsley made. You were thinking for yourself. You weren't just doing what they wanted. And then you went into the Lightfinder, and since then you've been more scared of yourself than they are. Why?"

Harry closed his eyes. "I think I'm—turning into a Darker wizard."

"What?"

"Splinter told me I would get thoughts," said Harry, looking away from her. "Thoughts about not trusting him, backing away from the Lightfinder and Lethe, and that they would get into my head and not let me rest. That started happening this morning."

"Those thoughts are just the results of your good sense returning," Hermione snapped.

Harry said nothing, in misery. He was scared, that was the thing. He knew Hermione might not understand why, she might think that he couldn't be afraid just like so many people in the wizarding world did, but Harry knew better. He was afraid because he had done all those things, and so many of them were things he couldn't control—like having the Horcrux attached to his soul—or had done on impulse, like casting the Cruciatus.

He had enough hatred and rage in his soul to cast the Unforgivables. He needed _something _to heal that.

"You're afraid."

Harry glanced up at Hermione with eyes that he knew were dull, and nodded. "Got it in one."

Hermione folded her arms. "You can't make decisions like this out of fear, Harry. Even if the person you're afraid of is yourself. Otherwise, you'll start running around and making bad choices just like the people who were afraid of Voldemort did."

Someone knocked on the door of the bare little room. The second interview was due to begin in a few minutes. Harry sighed, gulped down most of what remained of the water and the sandwich—something hunger had made him an expert in—and hugged Hermione.

"I need to be free of the fear," he whispered. "I need to at least try, okay?"

Hermione didn't get the chance to respond before Harry walked out of the room. His heart pounded when he saw the grim look on Splinter's face, and he nodded a little. "What is it?"

"We placed another construct in the Lightfinder," said Splinter. "This one had Pensieve memories of your childhood in it, and was built like you. This time, the aura was even darker, indigo." He gave Harry a long, slow look.

"It isn't _me, _though," Harry pointed out, and there was sweat behind his ears. "I haven't done anything else since I was diagnosed!"

"I know," said Splinter. "But it does mean that we have to look at your childhood more closely. There may be reasons for you to go Dark in there that we haven't been thinking about." He turned and gestured Harry imperiously after him. "Come on. We have to conduct some more tests on your memories."

Harry closed his eyes in misery and followed Splinter. He didn't know what he could do. He could rebel and run away, but then he would be hunted down as a Dark wizard and not have any kind of life. He could refuse to cooperate and just sit at home, but then he wouldn't be accepted into the society that was his only home. He could ask for more tests, but they were already doing all sorts of tests before they used Lethe, to make sure that it was safe for him.

What could he _do_?

"Potter. _Do_ look where you're going."

Harry started and opened his eyes. He had nearly bumped into Blaise Zabini, who stood in front of him wearing a disgruntled expression. He held up one hand and backed away a little, as though to keep a careful distance between him and Harry.

"Some of us aren't Dark, no matter what other people think, and don't _want _to be infected," he muttered.

Harry stared at him unblinkingly for a long moment before he stepped past him and walked on, down the long, sloping corridor that led into the Depths of the Department of Mysteries—an alternate pathway Harry would never have found on his own. Splinter was talking about the Lightfinder and the tests that it had conducted on other people now. There were a worrying number of green auras, and not as many red ones as they'd hoped.

Harry said nothing, but listened. And now and then, his hand lingered on the edge of his cloak, where Blaise's other hand had touched him while his extended hand was commanding all Splinter's attention.

He didn't get a chance to look at the crackling piece of paper there until hours later, when he was again at Grimmauld Place.

Malfoy's threat to tell everyone about the _Sectumsempra _incident would either have made Harry laugh or panic a few hours ago. Now?

Now, he was wondering how soon until he could slip away from his intense regime of tests and counter-tests and meet with Malfoy.

He wasted no time in sending the owl.

_This is something I can do._


	4. Backfiring

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Backfiring_

"An interesting choice of meeting place."

Draco let a few moments pass before he responded. He could use the time to make sure that his glamour was secure, and that the spells he'd raised around them to ensure silence and prevent magical eavesdropping worked.

And to get used to the change in Harry Potter.

Potter sat at the table in the Leaky Cauldron as if it was his one anchor to reality, his hand curled so hard around the side of the table that his knuckles looked blue instead of white. He had his eyes half-closed and his glasses off; Draco suspected he was using a charm of some kind to substitute for them. His hair was also a few shades lighter than normal, and a rakish curl stuck to the middle of his forehead, conveniently covering up the scar.

Not that that was the greatest change. The carefree man Draco had seen ascending the Lightfinder's stage a fortnight ago wouldn't have recognized the man who sat here now.

Potter opened his eyes fully, and Draco raised one more extra layer of protections. Potter was probably right that people wouldn't recognize him without the iconic scar and glasses, but those eyes still seemed, at least to Draco, to bespeak only one person.

"I thought you would have me come wherever you're hiding," Potter continued. Draco opened his mouth to excoriate him for that stupidity, but then Potter surprised him. "And then _Obliviate _me if I didn't prove cooperative."

Draco waved a hand for a drink instead of responding right away. He finally said, when he had a mug of butterbeer firmly in hand and it became obvious that Potter wouldn't ask for anything other than the crumb-covered plate in front of him, "I'm surprised that you also agreed to meet with me. Someone you dislike, someone hunted by the majority of the wizarding world." He paused, because he wanted to watch Potter's face when he said this. "A Dark wizard."

"Let's say that I think about that a little differently than I did a few weeks ago."

Draco took an abrupt sip of butterbeer. He would probably show too much glee if he didn't, and the last thing he wanted was Potter walking away when he had done most of the work _himself _to get him into the perfect place to take the bait.

"Oh? Why?" Draco asked neutrally.

"You know why." Potter rubbed his scar and continued speaking in a low, rambling murmur that sounded like the running of water. "I thought it was all my fault. That casting the Unforgivables and being connected to Voldemort the way I was, I sort of deserved it. That I was Dark, and that meant I had to be punished. How long would I have gone without knowing it if I'd just been walking around people and corrupting them? It was for the best. And if I could get rid of it, even better."

Draco held his tongue. After all, Potter had used the past tense.

Potter turned around and stared at Draco. His eyes had a frantic glaze that told Draco all he needed to know about why Potter had accepted his invitation. "But then I realized that there was no way I could trust anyone else to have the answers, either. There are things they don't know and I can't tell them." Draco made a mental note. "And there were these _thoughts _coming into my head. I thought they meant I was a Dark wizard, but it could mean anything. And Splinter hasn't even been tested in the Lightfinder yet." Potter laughed, and the sound crackled at the edges. "How do I know that he isn't Dark himself?"

Draco nodded. So Potter was here for his own self-interest rather than because he wanted to help anyone else or thought there was something fundamentally wrong in the wizarding world, but that was okay. Draco could work with that.

"I'm not offering you some kind of cure," Draco said carefully. "That's the first thing you have to understand, Potter. Even if you work with me, there's no way out of being a Dark wizard."

"You must not think it's a bad thing, or you would be trying to get rid of it." Potter leaned forwards and stared at Draco. "What does it mean? Are you only Dark because you cast curses during the war, or what?"

Draco relaxed completely. Even with Potter desperate, he was behaving exactly as Draco had hoped he would, giving Draco openings to explain. That meant he _could _achieve some of what he wanted without having to use blackmail.

Draco would do it if he had to, of course. But he would prefer not to. Potter wouldn't fight his best for them if he was being coerced to do it.

"It means that you have an affinity for certain kinds of spells," Draco said. "People in our world have given those spells names. Light Arts, Dark Arts, Shadow Arts." Potter's mouth shaped a silent question, but he didn't ask it, and Draco went on. "Or Healing Arts and Dream Arts and Defense, to name other categories. It all depends on what kind of magic one casts. Some spells from one category overlap into the others."

"But the Unforgivables can't be anything like Defense," Potter protested.

"No," Draco admitted easily. "But not that many spells are like the Unforgivables, either, Potter. They're the most extreme examples of their type. Would you say that something like the Shield Charm could never be used for Dark purposes?"

Potter opened his mouth, then closed it again and tapped his fingers on the table. "I suppose you could use it to block healing spells from someone," he muttered. "Or slam someone with it and knock them off a cliff."

Draco blinked. He hadn't thought of the first use. "Yes," he said. "So a Shield Charm is Defense, but it's also classified as Shadow Arts because it's hard to be absolutely, completely sure. Most of the spells that the common wizard learns are Shadow Arts, really. They're spells that might have neutral uses, or spells that could have multiple uses. Only spells that really don't have many different kinds of uses go into Light Arts or Dark Arts."

"I've never heard of any of this," Potter said, and rubbed his head as if his scar ached. Draco froze for a second, but then realized that Potter's hand was more on his temple, and relaxed. "Why haven't I heard of this?"

"Because we didn't have a Defense teacher worth shit except for Professor Snape?" Draco suggested dryly. "Dark Arts and Defense are supposed to be defined in that class. There aren't specific classes on the Shadow Arts because the category of spells is too big. And Light Arts spells take a lot of power to cast, and many wizards can't manage them at all. Like the Patronus, for example. No room for a class like that in Hogwarts when you would have few students and they'd spend months learning to cast a single spell."

"Snape could have done something, then."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Blame the Ministry for that. There are rules for what's supposed to be taught in a certain year. Professor Snape could bend them a little in our case, but not that much, especially when he was already being watched by people who thought he was a Death Eater." Draco swallowed a rough lump in his throat. His feelings about Snape were…complicated. "I do believe that he was teaching some of the distinctions to the first-years, who were supposed to learn it. But he never got to stay long enough."

Potter leaned back into the shadows. "I could manage a Patronus."

"I'll say whatever you want me to say about you being a wizard of rare power and talent," Draco warned him, lifting a hand. "Because it's true. But even you had to train for a while before you did it."

"It's not true."

"You really did it the first time?" Draco couldn't keep the skepticism out of his voice. Potter had been so affected by the Dementors that Draco was sure he would have used the spell before he actually did if he was capable of it.

"No, about me being a wizard of rare power." Potter leaned forwards enough that the light showed his face again, or at least the slightly altered features he had adopted for this meeting. He wore a stubborn look that Draco suspected he was soon to become familiar with. "I'm not. It wasn't power that defeated Voldemort."

Draco rolled his eyes. "And if we were in a normal situation where you could keep your delusions and I was just asking you to fight for me because it was the right thing to do, I wouldn't question that. But the Lightfinder revealed how extensive your aura was. If I didn't know that you were powerful before, I'd know it now."

Potter hunched down in misery. Draco tapped the table in front of him, making him start. "What makes you so upset about that? I'd be thrilled if it was me. It would mean I could defend myself better."

"Every time I try and defend myself, someone takes it the wrong way," Potter said, with enough suppressed violence to make Draco stare at him. "I don't want this. I wish that no one had ever invented the Lightfinder."

"But they did, and you went through it," Draco said, folding his arms and looking away. He would give Potter a bit of privacy to recover himself, but he wasn't about to put up with the reality-denying ways Gryffindors were famous for. "_Listen. _You're a Dark wizard. You can cast Dark Arts. You're more powerful if you cast them than if you cast Light magic. But your power let you manage the Light spells, too, and the Shadow spells with no trouble. Do you see?"

"I don't _want _to be good at cruel magic."

Draco slammed his hand down on the table this time instead of tapping his fingers, and was gratified by the way that Potter almost drew his wand. "You _idiot_. Who said that Dark Arts was all cruel magic? I already told you the way the Ministry classified them. There's almost no 'Light' magic or 'Light' wizards because so few have the power. That doesn't have anything to do with good or evil." He folded his arms. "And they're going to find almost no Light wizards, because they're rare."

"The Lightfinder is discovering some red people." Potter folded his arms back, nearly nudging his plate off the table with his elbow. "Splinter told me so."

Draco nodded, uncaring. "But those are mostly people who haven't cast any spells except minor Shadow ones in their lives, _because they can't._ He also told you that the red auras were small, right?"

Potter hesitated for the briefest moment. "Yes."

Draco spread his hands. "They don't have the power. When they find a wizard whose red aura flares out beyond his body, be impressed. That means they've found a wizard with an affinity for the Light Arts _and _the power to cast them."

"But people with red auras do have an affinity for Light."

"Yes, but the lack of power means they would never have known it if not for the Lightfinder." Draco snorted in bitter amusement. "They could use the Lightfinder to good purpose if they could use it on children when they were still young enough that their training hadn't started. That way, they would know who had an affinity for what and they could train them in different ways. You'd have some powerful natural Healers and people who would do well at Defense that way." He leaned in and stared at Potter. "But you can't find the good and evil ones."

Potter shut his eyes tight. "I wonder if they did, with me."

"They didn't," Draco said, and hoped that he could restrain his impatience enough so he wouldn't murder Potter before they got where they needed to go. "Because it finds no such thing."

"Right, you said." Potter propped his chin on his fist, brooding. Draco was starting to wonder how his side had done so well in the war, when that was all he seemed to do. "But like I said, there are things that taint me that you can't know anything about."

Draco ignored that. "I know from the size of your aura that you're powerful. I know from the color that you have an affinity for the Dark Arts. What that tells me is that you can be a political ally. If we're going to fight this…"

He let his voice trail off delicately, but for once Potter was looking past him instead of at him and didn't seem to notice. Draco was about to raise his voice and try again when Potter abruptly whipped around. His eyes were wide.

"I won't participate in a battle against my friends."

"Not that kind of battle," Draco said. He thought he knew at least part of what Potter was afraid of, now. "Of _course _we aren't going to take up arms against them. We're only going to make sure we have the same rights as anyone else."

Potter looked at his hands. The knuckles were at least white instead of blue, now. Draco decided to take that as an improvement.

Then Potter murmured, "Would you take up arms against them if that was the only way?"

"Define what you mean as 'the only way,' Potter," Draco snapped back at once. "If we were fighting for our lives, yes. Of course. If they were trying to execute all Dark wizards, which is the point it could reach if we're not careful? Of course." He eased up on his posture and considered Potter carefully. "But there's no sign yet that it's going to reach that stage."

Potter nodded. His breath was coming in shallow gasps. Draco sighed.

"You have questions you need to ask," he said. "So ask them."

Potter finally looked up, and Draco cocked his head. He had wondered for the past few minutes if this was such a good idea, if approaching Potter would just lead to a bloody panic attack and Potter striking out against Draco and the people Draco was trying to help.

But there was a fierce weight at the bottom of Potter's eyes, like a stone sunk in a pool, that Draco couldn't help approving of. Maybe this _would _work out, after all. At least if Potter behaved like a human being who wanted to defend his own life instead of just the martyr.

* * *

><p>"I want to know what the Dark Arts are. If they're not cruel magic and they're not all the Unforgivables, what are they?"<p>

Harry marveled at his own voice. It sounded like the voice of someone who had a plan and was calm and intelligent. He hadn't known that he _could _still sound like that. He had thought he'd given up all hope of it when Splinter told him he was Dark.

He would still be checking what Malfoy told him with Hermione, of course. It was ridiculous, at least to Harry, that they'd got all this way into their lives and Harry had never heard of these divisions of magic, while wizards reared in Death Eater families conveniently knew all about them.

Malfoy considered him for a second with his face so clear and yet so closed that Harry couldn't tell what he felt at all. Then Malfoy nodded slightly and picked up his mug. He sipped from it before putting it down and leaning intently forwards so that he could almost touch Harry's chin with his hair.

Harry steeled himself against flinching away. They needed to be confederates, or at least maybe they did if Malfoy was telling the truth and the Lightfinder hadn't discovered evil in Harry's soul. So they needed to sit like them, too.

"They're the spells that _can _have a destructive purpose," Malfoy explained quietly. "The ones that can control someone's will—they destroy the victim's freedom. Curses like the Blasting Curse can be used to demolish walls, or people. And the ones that kill and torture are Dark Arts, of course."

"But _Aurors _use the Blasting Curse."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow that made him look a lot more cynical than he'd ever managed in school when he was _trying _to appear that way. "Of course they do. I told you that the distinction between the Dark Arts and the other kinds of magic is one the Ministry made up. That means they can also violate it when they want to and not emphasize that certain kinds of spells are crossing over."

Harry pushed his hand through the hair on his forehead. He saw Malfoy's eyes dart to the scar. Maybe Malfoy was wondering if Voldemort was back when Harry touched his scar.

Harry almost wished for it. It would probably be simpler than this.

"Don't people get upset about that?" Harry tried.

Malfoy shrugged a little. "Some people don't care. Our generation doesn't have that many people who know." He offered Harry a dark smile. "Other people think that it doesn't matter as long it's not Dark wizards using the spell. But you've got to understand, Potter." And this time he actually reached out and took one of Harry's hands. His own palm was damp and unpleasantly warm. Harry managed to refrain from jumping and flinching, but it was hard. "The Lightfinder can find the affinity for Dark Arts. It means that you could cast them well. _It doesn't mean you will_."

Harry's stomach clenched painfully. There was the distinction the Ministry hadn't bothered to make.

But he didn't know if it was a distinction he could trust, either. Consider the source. Meanwhile, Harry trusted Kingsley, and at least Kingsley had told him that the Lightfinder worked the way the Ministry said it did, to find good and evil.

"Do you like to cast them?" he whispered, and didn't care when his breath passed over Malfoy's lips or Malfoy's eyes widened.

"That's a different question again, Potter." Malfoy shook his head a minute later. "Am I close to them? Yes. Could I cast them with power? Yes. Did I receive an—education during the war from people who thought it would be a good idea if I cast them? Yes." His eyes met Harry's for a moment.

Harry stared back. He hadn't thought that he would find that much empathy for what he had endured during the war in Draco Malfoy, of all people.

A second later, Malfoy broke that too-understanding gaze and stared at the table. "But I don't really want to use most of them," he whispered. "I saw too much of what they made people suffer during the war."

"Then I don't understand why you're so set on fighting for the rights of Dark wizards," Harry replied. "If you—"

He gasped, because Malfoy's hand had shifted and was clasping his tightly enough to grind some important bones together. Malfoy grimaced at him a little. "They have a way that _does _detect affinities now. I could lie, but I wouldn't be believed. And I would use those spells if my life was in danger.

"And I told you. It's all about public perception." Malfoy leaned back a little, but it didn't lessen the charge of the small space between them. "How many people are going to be on your side, or listen to the explanation of you being closer to the Dark Arts but not evil, now that the Ministry has publically declared you someone to worry about? I could explain the technical distinctions until I was blue in the face, and no one would listen. Or at least, not enough people would listen to get me out of trouble."

"But it's technical details that you're hoping to have me explain!" Harry flung his free hand up. "I don't know how I can be much help. I don't even understand them as well as you do!"

Malfoy caught his other hand and whispered, "_Listen. _I know that you have power in your name and your history. You just have to learn how to use it."

Abruptly, Harry was sure he knew what this was about, and only the fact that Malfoy had hold of his hands prevented him from getting up and storming out of the Leaky. "So you're going to feed me information and make me your political figurehead? Is that it?"

Malfoy gave a short, sharp laugh that Harry was sure would have attracted attention if not for the spells around their table. "Haven't you got the message, Potter? That's what you are already. I'm trying to give you some more ability to save yourself instead of mindlessly having to go along with whatever the Ministry tells you."

Harry only gave his hand a shake in response. Malfoy still didn't let it go. "I'm not the Ministry's figurehead! If anything, I'm its scapegoat!"

"They're making the same use of you either way." Malfoy shook his hands again, and Harry grimaced. It was beginning to get painful. "They're scaring people, making them run, making them mindless sheep. See what happened to the great Harry Potter? The same thing could happen to you if you're not careful! If we need to imprison the great Harry Potter and shepherd him around to make sure that he doesn't come into contact with _normal _people, then we need to do the same thing for anyone who tests Dark!"

"They're paying more attention to me because of who I am! They wouldn't bother you that much. Or anyone else who isn't a Death Eater."

Malfoy's face turned a plum color, but his voice was stronger and steadier than ever. "You think so? They've already told As—a friend of mine who's been helping me that she'll have to get tested. And her family isn't Death Eaters, they never had anything to do with them. She was in Slytherin, that's all." His smile turned nasty. "I suppose you haven't heard that they're going to be testing the Lightfinder on the first-years getting ready to go to Hogwarts? They'll prevent children who test Dark from boarding the train."

"That's _mad_." Harry's head felt like it was spinning. His tongue was thick, dusty, dry.

Malfoy shrugged. "That's the way things are right now. The whole world is going mad, and you could prevent it if you wanted to." He let go of Harry's hands and stared at him, challenging, right in the eye. "But I reckon that you don't want to. You probably don't care as long as it doesn't happen to your friends."

"It's happening to _me_—"

"That doesn't count, you bloody martyr." Malfoy's breath was hot on his cheek as he leaned in again. "You're crumbling to the ground, whimpering that you deserve it because of all this unspecified evil in your past. You won't stand up and _fight_."

Harry stared at him, his mind full of children, like him, who had been raised in the Muggle world and needed Hogwarts as an escape. They needed it so _badly_.

And then they would walk into the Lightfinder, and turn out to have a magical affinity they never knew about, and they would have Hogwarts taken away from them.

"Those Dark children can't be in the school with our _normal _children," Malfoy murmured, seeming to read his mind. Maybe he knew Legilimency. "They can't pollute our _normal _minds. Oh, no, what are we going to do if they ruin our _normality_?"

Harry snarled, his mind full of Muggleborns being sent back to homes where their relatives would tell them smugly that of course they were freaks, that even other freaks thought so. "Fine."

"Fine what?"

"I'll do it." Harry was the one to take Malfoy's hand this time, and press down until he heard a warning noise. "But if you try to make me into a figurehead, you'll find out why I have an affinity for the Dark Arts."

He didn't expect light, of all things, to come into Malfoy's eyes, or the look that he gave Harry.

"Thank you," Malfoy breathed. "_Thank _you."

Harry shrugged, a little embarrassed, and moved his hair back into place over his scar. "So what exactly is your plan for this little rebellion?"


	5. Searching for Answers

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—Searching for Answers_

Harry was still shaking when he got home. The first thing he did was toss a handful of Floo powder into the fire.

A second later, he groaned as sparkling red bars sprang to life above the flames. He had forgotten that the Ministry had warded his Floo so that he couldn't call just anyone. Harry had accepted it at the time. Why not? He had been stunned, disbelieving, still sunk in worrying about how Dark he really was and what sort of pain he had caused that he'd never noticed. What did he care if the Ministry cut him off from contact with normal people?

Now, with his eyes opened by Malfoy's words, his gut burned. What if they did this to the children, too? Forbidden to send owls, shown the magical world and then promptly shoved back out? Or what if they used Memory Charms on them so they never remembered they'd seen anything wondrous at all?

Harry swore furiously to himself and began to pace. He could break the wards without much problem. But then they would know he'd broken them. Splinter had emphasized the alarms that would ring if Harry used the Floo without permission, if he was gone from the house more than half an hour or to any one of a number of suspicious places, or if he cast a Dark spell. Harry had only managed to slip out for the meeting with Malfoy because the Leaky Cauldron was on the small list of places he didn't need permission to go.

_People who frequent it already know you, and know to stay away from you, _Splinter had told him when Harry asked about it a week ago.

Now, in the middle of his own home—a house he'd inherited from a man suspected for half his life of doing something horrible and Dark—that notion struck Harry like a blow to the face. They were _going to stay away from him? _For _what? _What kind of disease or taint did they think he'd pick up from them, that all the "normal" people had to huddle on one side of the room while Harry was on the other?

_I was blind. I was stupid and blind. I was panicking, and I shouldn't have been panicking_.

Even that, Harry thought, wasn't enough of an excuse. But the other half of it was the way he'd felt since the war. He'd been perfectly relaxed and happy to do what Kingsley asked of him when it came to the Lightfinder because he really did think it was all over, that he would never suffer anything as bad as the war again. That had made it hit him all the harder when he realized he was Dark.

_I have an affinity for spells they don't want me to practice. So bloody what? Did they even _think _about that, or do they think the Lightfinder measures something else?_

Harry's footsteps slowed at that thought. They did, didn't they? Kingsley had told him that. They thought it measured the taint on the soul that came from casting certain spells. And he only had Malfoy's word that Dark wizards really had an affinity for spells and not—not something else. Something evil.

_Can I trust Malfoy?_

He could trust him to want to save his own life. Even to save his friends, Harry thought. He could trust him not to come up with a silly lie that was easily disproven. Malfoy had changed from the boy in school who _would _have come up with a lie like that.

If Malfoy was right, though, some of the older people, not in Harry's generation, ought to know what was going on. They would have been taught the same things Malfoy was claiming all wizards had once learned, that the Ministry had wanted them to learn as children in Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Harry still had a limited number of people he could owl without suspicion, especially if the owl seemed aimed at trying to make himself better and Light. And he immediately sat down and wrote a letter to Kingsley, struggling to phrase it in a way that wouldn't make Kingsley wonder who he had talked to and where he had gone.

Now, he was thinking about things like that as a practical matter of survival. A day ago, he would have been nodding gloomily and thinking that of _course _they couldn't trust him. Harry couldn't trust _himself. _He hadn't known _anything _about the taint on his soul until the Lightfinder told him.

Now…

_I should have known better. I should have realized that they were going to wheel around against me the instant I did something they didn't like._

Harry's hands were cold and shaking as he wrote. He was thinking of the Muggleborn children who might be turned back into the Muggle world, and the younger children who might be put in Slytherin and then promptly into the Lightfinder.

But he was thinking, too, of George, who Harry knew had gone out hunting Death Eaters a month ago, trying in vain to find the exact one who had made the stone wall fall on Fred. He had used Dark spells. He'd told Harry that.

He was thinking of Hermione, who no longer let rules stop her.

He was thinking of Ginny, who had hinted some things, before the Lightfinder and the cessation of contact between her and Harry, about what she'd done to survive the war in Hogwarts intact.

_If I had to be a sacrifice so that my friends could go free, I could do that. But they have to go free._

_And I'm not going to be a sacrifice to the wizarding world's peace of mind anymore. I absolutely won't do it. I was stupid to consider doing it in the first place._

* * *

><p>"It really seemed to go well?"<p>

Draco leaned back in the leather chair that Astoria's ancestors had been kind enough to bequeath her and sighed, taking a long sip of his Firewhisky. He hadn't been relaxed enough to drink it in front of Potter, but Merlin, he needed it now. "It seemed to. Of course, he only really listened when I started talking about children. And he was probably thinking of Muggleborns the whole time." Draco rolled his eyes. "He's going to be a trial to work with."

But a trial was better than nothing, and he could see the thought echoed on Pansy's face without him ever speaking the words.

"I wonder if he was thinking of himself, too," said Pansy idly, sitting down in the chair next to Draco and folding her legs up the way she only did when she was relaxed. Draco hid a smile behind his glass. "I mean, he might have been, if the conversation went that way."

"The only thing Potter thinks about in relation to himself is how he can martyr himself best," Draco said darkly. The more he thought about it, the more it infuriated him, Potter plodding to the guillotine like a little blind lamb. "He's powerful, he's Dark, he shouldn't be _doing _that."

He looked up to see Pansy frowning at him. "I didn't mean that. I mean that he was a child who was almost shut out of the wizarding world, too, so maybe he does think about it more." Pansy waved her hand. "Whatever convinces him."

"Oh, come on, Pansy. You didn't _really _believe those rumors about his relatives?"

"Not the ones that said they were starving him to skin and bones every year and he had to escape by climbing down a rope from his window, no." Pansy shook her head. "But the ones that said he was ignorant? Yeah. You only had to look at him our first year to see that."

Draco opened his mouth, then shut it with a frown. It was true that Potter had been stunningly ignorant, and not only about what Dark and Light spells really were—an ignorance that was frustratingly widespread in Draco's own generation. He didn't know how to write with a quill, his own family history, that Sirius Black had been his godfather, that spells existed to correct his eyesight, that there was a difference between some wizarding families and others, _anything_.

"You really never noticed this before," said Pansy, in the tone of someone making an interesting observation.

Draco held up one hand, and unusually for her, Pansy respected the demand for silence. Draco chewed his lip for a second, and then shrugged. "It changes nothing, except that I might understand why Potter makes some of the demands he does."

"Yes, you might understand that," said Pansy, and never hid that she was rolling her eyes.

Then again, there were lots of things that Draco had never hidden from her, either, and they still managed to support and help each other. He leaned further back in the leather chair, sipped again from his Firewhisky, and continued, "Now, let's just hope that Potter doesn't do anything stupid—"

Something hit the door of the room. Draco found his drink on the floor, his wand in his hand, and Pansy standing beside him before he'd even been aware that he was moving.

Then the door opened, and Astoria was there, pale and trembling, her face like porcelain. Draco opened his mouth to ask what was happening, but shut it again when two Aurors followed Astoria into the room.

Draco had a moment's shaken conviction that Astoria had betrayed them, but when he looked at her, he knew the truth. Something else had. Maybe Daphne, who had never been as happy as Astoria about hiding them, or maybe Draco hadn't taken enough precautions when he went to meet Potter.

"Surrender, and you won't be harmed," said the nearer Auror in a bored voice. Draco wasn't fooled. He had heard boredom like that before from some of the Death Eaters, the ones who enjoyed hurting people. This woman had the same feral look in her eyes, and her hand on the wand was a little white, and her breathing was a little fast.

"What she says," said the other Auror, one that looked familiar to Draco from his father's arrest, although he didn't know his name.

Draco raised his wand higher, and angled his body a little in front of Pansy, signals she would grasp at once. "I know that Parkinson is being sought because she wanted to turn Potter over to the Dark Lord, but what about me? I've already been sentenced. It wouldn't make sense to take me into custody when I can't be tried for anything else."

"You wouldn't have run if you weren't guilty of something," the female Auror retorted instantly.

_If that's the way you want to play it. _Draco sighed and let his head hang. "I'm lowering my wand, all right?" he whispered. "I'm putting it down. Don't curse me."

They both followed him as he lowered his wand, but they weren't fast enough. They didn't have the training to cope with a Dark wizard, even if they were Dark themselves. Few people learned those spells anymore.

Or maybe it was that they simply didn't have the speed and determination that desperation had given Draco.

When his wand was at the level of the table, Draco cast the spell, nonverbally, although the effort made sweat spring out on his forehead. _Terror pone_, he thought, as hard as he could.

The spell formed slowly behind the Aurors. Draco couldn't see its form; only those the spell was cast on would know exactly what stood at their backs, always at their backs no matter which way they turned, and breathed coldly on their ears. The man's face became waxen. The woman shut her eyes.

Draco grabbed Pansy's hand, in the moment before their training would probably take over and they would manage to dispel the magic, and slipped out of the room behind the Aurors. He took Astoria's arm, too, and she shook herself from the trance and ran with them, moving lightly, her slippers shuffling. Draco Transfigured them into sturdier shoes without stopping. She would have to come with them, and that meant she would need more practical footwear.

Astoria drew her wand and murmured Summoning Charms. Draco nodded as jewelry and coins came flying towards them, along with a few of the more useful books. At least fear didn't paralyze Astoria the way Draco had thought it might. She was only sixteen, but she knew that, right now, worrying about the Trace on her wand was the last thing they needed to do.

_She'll have to have a new wand, though. Or else use ours._

Pansy was the one who woke Draco from his trance, shaking Draco's arm hard. "Draco, where are we going to go?"

She wasn't panicking, either, but Draco knew that steel ice surface could crack and let the fear through. He took her hand, smiled into her eyes, and murmured, "My owls could get to Potter even through the protections they had set up. It probably has to do with him being at a Black house and my mother being a Black. We're going to take the chance and go there."

Pansy shut her eyes and nodded. "I suppose you know where it is?"

"I know the name," said Draco. "But I can do better than that." He turned to Astoria as she dropped the wards on the house, and she knew. In a blink, Draco seized both their arms and spun in place, Apparating.

They appeared on the path that led from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts.

Pansy stared at him, panting, her hair moving in the little puffs from her breath. "Draco," she whispered.

"There's no one here yet," Draco said, which was true. The work of rebuilding the school had gone more slowly than the Ministry had predicted, and with the Lightfinder distracting them, Draco didn't know when they would get back to it. That benefited them, right now, since no one would think they would come here.

He Disillusioned them and walked briskly along the path. Astoria got it after a moment, and shook herself free to walk beside him. Her mouth was set and white. Pansy still trailed behind in a silence that grew thicker and heavier, and made Draco want to snap at her.

_What other options do we have? _Yes, they had hoped they could stay safe in Astoria's home, but that hope was unfounded. Fine. Draco planned to adapt and survive, not sit somewhere and whimper.

_And I'm glad that I went ahead and contacted Potter, so we at least have an option about where to go._

That didn't mean Potter would let them stay with him. From the way Pansy caught up with him a second later and murmured, "If it would make it easier for me to stay behind, I can go somewhere else," she understood that very well.

"No," Draco told her. "He might reject us, but he's going to reject us together, not one by one."

Pansy closed her eyes. Draco shook her shoulder before he looked away. He knew that she didn't want him witnessing her weakness, and he would have done the same for her.

They made their way through the gates and around the side of the castle. Draco knew better than to go inside. For one thing, the Ministry would have some protections set up; for another, sections of the school were still unstable.

But as he stepped over rubble and stopped, gazing up, he saw what he had hoped to. The Owlery still had birds soaring around it and ducking through the windows. This was among the sections of the school not as badly-damaged.

Draco whistled softly. One of the owls swooped down and towards him. Draco drew his wand and became visible, though he tasted his heart in his mouth as he did so. If they were going to be spotted and stopped, this was when it would probably happen.

But nothing happened, at least right then, except the owl settling on his shoulder and giving him an inquiring look. Draco plunged a hand into his pocket, and then groaned. He'd forgotten to bring any parchment or ink.

"Here."

Astoria handed what he needed over, and Draco smiled at her. She didn't seem to notice, since she was examining their surroundings with eyes that darted from wall to wall, from rubble to new-entwined growing plants and towards the Forest. Draco nodded. They needed someone who would keep watch for them.

He wrote, as quickly as he could while he braced the parchment against the wall, about what had happened, and then he attached the letter to the owl. It hooted at him in a way that sounded like gratitude—maybe it had been bored—and then swooped up and away. Draco Disillusioned them again and cast some Warming Charms. Astoria leaned close against him, and Pansy stood up as Draco sank down against the wall.

"What now?" Pansy whispered.

"Now?" Draco shrugged. "We wait."

* * *

><p>Harry sat back, shaking his head. Kingsley's letter had come almost as soon as Harry contacted him, or at least it seemed that way. Harry knew about how long it took an owl to fly from Grimmauld Place to the Ministry, and the bird had returned awfully fast.<p>

_Harry,_

_I know the chaos you must be feeling in your soul. None of us thought you would test Dark. We should have been prepared for the possibility and prepared _you _for the possibility, but none of us did. I'm sorry._

_As for what you say about Dark Arts, yes, it's true that you probably have some power in casting the Unforgivables. But it's not just about power, or the Lightfinder wouldn't have told us anything new. There are already spells that can reveal the extent of a wizard's magical strength. What the Lightfinder tells us is the likelihood of someone doing it again—the taint on the soul that we talked about._

_Your aura was huge, and dark. The darkness is the important thing here, how it had indigo at the edges. If you were green with some blue, then I think we wouldn't take it as seriously, but there was indigo in front of the entire wizarding world. We had to do something._

_You used the Unforgivables. You cast them well. Forgive me for saying it, Harry, but you had the hatred and pain in your soul that enabled you to cast the Cruciatus, and the desire to have someone else under your control that let you cast the Imperius. So this is the way it has to be. You have to remain under custody until we could find a way to reverse it._

_Splinter is confident he can reverse it. That's what Lethe is for. And once we have it, then you can give up that affinity for the Dark Arts. That's what Lethe will erase, your closeness to that kind of magic. After that, your aura should be red._

_Kingsley_.

Harry bowed his head a little. So Malfoy had been right that older wizards still knew about that closeness to a certain kind of spell that Dark wizards had. He was wrong about that making any difference to the Ministry.

Or maybe he had never said that he thought it would, and Harry was just the one who had _hoped _it would be different once he explained things to Kingsley. Harry's head was whirling so much it was hard to be sure.

Harry sighed and put the letter down, and only then noticed another owl waiting. This one was brown and nondescript, but there was only a limited number of people it could have come from. Harry put his hand out. "Hey, what it is?"

The owl hopped onto his shoulder and insistently held out the letter. Harry opened it, and found Malfoy's handwriting.

This day just got weirder and weirder.

_I know you don't have much reason to trust us, Potter, but we've been chased out of the place where we were staying by Aurors who found us. Do you have enough room in the old Black house to accommodate three guests? Can you get us through the wards without alerting anyone? We're at Hogwarts._

There was no signature, as if Malfoy had been relying on Harry recognizing his writing. Then again, who else would communicate with Harry through mysterious unsigned letters at this point? And Harry didn't think the wards would have allowed many other letters through.

He sighed and wondered for a long minute whether he should go get Malfoy and his "guests" or have them come to him. Either was risky, but Hogwarts wasn't on the list of places that Harry could go—he hadn't thought to ask for it—and that meant he would probably trigger an alarm the instant he left.

_Come ahead, _he wrote, along with the Apparition coordinates, and the owl grabbed the letter in its beak and took off through the window, feathers bristling with importance.

Harry sat still for a long second before he called to Kreacher to start cleaning out some of the bedrooms that had stayed silent and unoccupied for years.

* * *

><p>Draco appeared next to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and spent a moment staring at the ugly old thing. He could see why his mother had never contested the inheritance that Sirius Black had left to Potter. It wasn't worth claiming.<p>

But it could be a sanctuary now, and while it wouldn't be as luxurious as Astoria's house, it looked more than big enough to hold them. Draco prodded Astoria, who was staring, gently forwards, and she blushed and started walking. Pansy followed behind Draco, still grumbling under her breath.

"—really sure we can trust him? What if we can't? What if he remembers his Light roots and turns us over to the Aurors?"

Draco shrugged at her. "He would probably get in just as much trouble as we would, even if he didn't do anything to cause it. They're that suspicious of him now."

He wanted to say, too, that Potter had never been a Light wizard and he was starting to understand that, but he didn't want to get into an argument with Pansy about it. And she was in the mood to argue.

For a moment, Draco felt a tingle of wards, but they slid over him without reaction. His Black blood, he supposed.

A second later, Astoria and Pansy froze in place. Draco whirled around, hand on his wand. He had thought that having them accompany him would be enough to get them inside, but maybe not—

"Just a second."

Potter's tooth-gritted voice came from behind him. Draco forced himself to lift his hand off his wand and still, and watch as the wards wavered back and forth, seemingly caught between the need to defend the house and Potter's uncertain control.

Draco heard a grunt of effort a second later, and the wards snapped back behind Pansy and Astoria, leaving them able to move. They hurried towards Draco and stood beside him, and Draco turned around.

Harry Potter leaned, panting, against the side of his doorframe. He shook his head when he met Draco's eyes and pushed sweat-soaked hair away from his scar.

"I suppose that's well and truly put me on the side of the Dark, now," he muttered. "You can come in."


	6. Council of War

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Council of War_

"Will your friends be joining us, Potter?"

Draco used the question as a neutral one. He was too occupied in staring at the riches of library around him to ask something deeper, or more probing, or more interesting.

The library had shelves that loomed to the ceiling, and the books that occupied them were squashed together, worn leather binding against bright red, covers that almost looked like woven wood and ones that had to be dragonhide scattered casually here and there. Without looking more closely, Draco couldn't tell their system of organization, but he had no doubt that they were old. And there were a few titles that told him here were tomes that most people had considered lost forever.

He wanted to wander along the shelves, let his fingers trail down the spines, and absorb the sense of lingering magic and power there. He wanted to see if there was any way that he could learn something from simple touch. Some grimoires spoke to you like that, through the brush of fingers on the binding of someone brave enough to touch them, instead of looking at their pages. Their secrets were powerful enough to destroy you if you read them.

"No," Potter said, and shocked Draco back to the moment. It was probably a good thing. Astoria's hold on his arm was getting uncomfortable, and Draco wanted her to be able to stand on her own in a lair of their enemies—or the people who had recently been their enemies—not seem like she would be a good target. He gently let her hand go, and patted it when she looked up at him with an expression like pain. Astoria bit her lip, understanding, and turned away, sitting down in the chair furthest from the fire.

"Why not?" Pansy studied Potter from head to foot. Draco hoped she was seeing some of the same things Draco had during their last meeting, the open secrets that had made him decide to take a chance on Potter.

"Because I can't get a firecall through to them, and sending an owl would be too conspicuous if they're in a meeting or something," Potter said simply. "And I'm not sure how they would react to seeing you here." He was looking at Draco in particular, but his eyes flicked sideways to encompass Pansy, too.

Pansy grimaced and nodded. "What are you planning?"

"That depends a lot on you." Potter finally finished piling wood in the fireplace and flicked his wand to light it. He turned around with his back to the hearth and studied them with as much interest as they'd given him. "I wasn't planning on hosting you this morning, you understand."

"We need to come up with a way to use your fame and get the word out to the public about what the Lightfinder really does," Draco said, because they did, and he was a little exasperated with the notion that they would do something else first.

"What proof do we have?" Potter extended one empty hand.

Draco snorted. "Maybe you scorn to make allies of older generations, but I don't. They're the ones who know about Dark and Light and Shadow affinities, and what they really mean. And the other categories of spells, too. They're the ones who can help us make the best arguments about the spells that stand to get banned if the Ministry keeps going the way it is, and how many of them are ordinary spells that no one would be able to live without."

Potter bit his lip for a moment. Then he nodded and folded his arms, leaning back so that his head bumped against the mantel. "But what about the younger generations? And how are we going to show that the Lightfinder _does _show your affinity instead of, for example, the taint on the soul that the Ministry believes it shows?"

"It's _ridiculous _that anyone believes that," said Pansy fiercely.

"Agreed. But we still need proof otherwise, because that's what the paper is telling everyone." Potter glanced at her, then waved his wand and floated a piece of parchment over to him. "I thought I'd write to Shacklebolt today and ask about what you told me—"

Draco found himself on his feet without thinking about it. Well, he _had _just escaped from Aurors who wanted to take him captive and maybe torture him, and only spent about half an hour in the bedroom Potter had given him before they gathered in the library. "You've just revealed everything, then?" he asked, and lifted his wand to cast a Memory Charm.

Potter's wand was already there, though, and he gave Draco a flat look. "_No_. I only asked about what you said, about the Light and the Dark Arts and the affinities. I had to have some independent source of confirmation. Otherwise, admit it, you would have called me a fool and a trusting Gryffindor, and say that I shouldn't have believed you so readily."

Draco frowned and shifted his shoulders backwards, dropping his wand to his side. "I wouldn't have said that."

But he probably would have thought it, at least if Potter had appeared to embrace Draco's words without considering them carefully. Potter watched him with gleaming eyes that said he knew it.

"Fine. Shacklebolt, at least, is utterly convinced that the Lightfinder reveals a taint on the soul, and he thinks that I'll be fine as soon as I go through Lethe. Here."

He handed the letter to Draco. Draco kept himself from gaping, but barely. This was a level of trust he hadn't thought he would get from Potter. It meant that he—that he—

Would have to consider some of his own movements more carefully, especially if Potter wasn't such a Gryffindor fool as he'd presumed.

He read through the letter, and Pansy came forwards to read over his shoulder. Astoria curled up harder in her chair and shivered.

"What does it say?" she whispered.

Potter cast her an unexpectedly tender glance. Draco raised his eyebrows, and then snorted in remembrance. Potter could see she was younger than they were, and he'd never had hostile dealings with her when she was still in Slytherin. He probably wanted to safeguard her for the same reason that he did the children Draco had mentioned.

_So Potter's still a hero, even if he's stopped being a martyr. Check. Let's hope that works out for us._

"That Potter here has the hatred and the power in his soul to cast the Unforgivables, and the Lightfinder doesn't just reveal the extent of a wizard's power and affinity because there are spells that would show that already," said Draco sourly, and held the letter out to Pansy, who carried it over to Astoria. He switched his gaze back to Potter. "How did that make you feel?" He would have been furious, himself.

"Abandoned, at first," said Potter, and then his head came up. "And then furious. But it gave me the beginnings of a plan. There are spells that show a wizard's power. Can we show similarities between them and the Lightfinder?"

Draco raised his eyebrows, interested. "Not all of them would show someone's power as color. Are you asking about something that could do that?"

"Could we show that a spell like that functions like the Lightfinder?" Potter countered. "I don't know enough magical theory to come up with a good description. Maybe Hermione would." Draco curled his lip a little, but although Potter gave him a stern look, he didn't consider it enough worth bothering about to interrupt himself. "Or maybe we could develop a spell like the Lightfinder that would show power as color, but we could make everyone acknowledge that that was just what it _did_, that it didn't show a taint on the soul."

"That's unexpectedly clever," said Draco.

Potter gave him a grin with edges. "Thank you."

"Oh, you know what he means, Potter," said Pansy, breaking in before Draco could say something he might regret. "I think we have to show that spells like that function the same way the Lightfinder does. Developing a new spell takes a long time."

"That's true." Potter shrugged a little. "So now we just have to come up with a good candidate."

"There's the Soul Revelation Spell."

Astoria's voice was so quiet and Potter so still that Draco thought at first Potter hadn't heard her, and started to open his mouth to explain. But then he saw Potter turn towards Astoria's chair, and nod encouragingly. "Yes? What's that? Does it function differently from the Lightfinder if it shows the soul?"

Astoria was sitting up with her hands clenched as if fighting against her own temerity, but she gave Potter a sharp glance at his words, and Draco smiled. She needed some opposition to find her voice, just like some Slytherins always had. "It's not really the _soul _that it shows, and I don't _care _what they told you."

"I've never heard of the spell, and I don't believe that the Lightfinder shows my soul." Potter gave a restless little motion of his hand that he cut off when Astoria frowned and bit her lip, maybe when he saw how nervous she was. "I was just going by the name of the spell."

Pansy opened her mouth, but Draco caught her eye and shook his head. It would be good if Potter respected Astoria as one of them, and that meant letting her speak up with her own words and make her own mistakes, if she was going to make them.

"The Soul Revelation Spell just shows your affinity and power," said Astoria. "It doesn't show the soul. It got named that by ignorant people who didn't understand what it _did. _Just like the Lightfinder."

Now that Draco thought of it, he should have remembered that. Granted, the Soul Revelation Spell wasn't one he had at the top of his thoughts all the time. But the Lightfinder ought to have reminded him of it, and that should have made him wonder why the Ministry needed to invent a machine for the same purpose when they had that spell.

Potter hadn't only wondered the same thing, he had leaped past Draco to the answer. "They really _must _believe that the Lightfinder shows the soul," he muttered. "Or they would have just used the spell."

His face was downcast, the shadows dark in his eyes. Draco frowned at him. Potter sounded more depressed than elated.

"Yes," said Pansy. "They do. No matter how stupid it is. Magic that affects the soul is simply _rare_. It's Light Arts, and that means hard to master, and the Ministry would tax a lot of its practitioners doing it. That's if they even have more than a few people who can perform this spell, which I doubt. And so they probably thought a machine was more trustworthy and more efficient."

Potter grunted something. Astoria said, "I think we ought to let as many people as possible know about this spell, so that we can point out the similarities between it and the Lightfinder and urge them to stop using the Lightfinder."

"How are we going to do that?" Pansy demanded. "It's not like we have regular access to lots of owls and pamphlets."

Astoria replied heatedly, and Pansy moved over to her so they could argue better. Draco left them to it. He had a target of his own, and he stood up and approached Potter, who was turned around so that he was staring into the fireplace, his hands resting heavily on the mantel.

"What is it?" Draco asked. It would probably turn out to be something ordinary, but for the moment, Potter was more fascinating even than the library.

"There's a small chance that the Lightfinder might show the soul. Or be involved with soul magic, at least."

"No, there's not," Draco said sharply. "Because the soul, assuming that it exists as a definable identity, has nothing to do with your affinity or your power." He paused. Potter said nothing. "Are you going to explain what you mean?"

* * *

><p><em>I shouldn't .But what if they make a wrong decision because they don't have all the information?<em>

Harry turned slowly around. There might be a way to explain the connection he'd had with Voldemort without explaining all the nuances, he thought. The last thing he wanted was to expose the kind of soul magic Voldemort had used.

But they had to understand something, and from the way Malfoy was standing near him, with flared nostrils and dark, intent eyes, he wouldn't be put off by an ordinary lie.

"You know that I had a connection with Voldemort," Harry said, and tapped his scar.

Malfoy flinched. "Do you have to use that name?"

"_Yes,_" Harry snapped. "Because it's a bloody _name. _If you really didn't believe that he was gone and never coming back, then I doubt you would be standing here now!"

Malfoy hesitated. "Point." On the other side of the library, Parkinson and Greengrass had gone still. Harry exhaled. Malfoy continued, "But what kind of connection was it?"

This much, Harry thought he could explain without endangering anything. "A soul connection," he replied. "I could see through his eyes and feel his emotions. I could sometimes see what his snake familiar was doing, because Nagini was also linked to his soul." Malfoy looked pale and sick, and Harry nodded grimly. "It has to do with the way that my mother sacrificed herself to save me that night, and then he used my blood in a ritual to come back. So the connection we had got strengthened. My scar hurt and sometimes bled when he was angry. And sometimes he knew what I knew. That sort of thing."

Malfoy swallowed, but got back to the main point instead of being distracted into gape-mouthed horror like it seemed the two Slytherin girls were going to be. "And so you think the Lightfinder might have picked up on a real taint in your soul, because you were linked to someone evil?"

Harry nodded, relieved that he didn't need to talk about Horcruxes and split souls and all the rest of it. "We won't know for sure until they test the Lightfinder on lots of other people—"

"They have," Malfoy interrupted, looking at him strangely. "Didn't you know that? Most of the news stories have been following you and the development of Lethe, but of course they've done other tests."

Harry shook his head slowly. "I was barely reading the news, and only paying attention to what was happening with Lethe and these attempts to 'redeem' me," he admitted. He did remember Hermione bringing up something about testing other people in the Lightfinder, but she had been able to tell he wasn't interested, and she'd dropped it. "How many people? How many have tested Dark?"

"A hundred and ten, and almost everyone has tested at least green." Malfoy folded his arms and stared at him. "They've only tested a few red ones and a few yellow ones, and they were all children but one."

"That means they've had less time to do evil things?" Harry asked.

Malfoy gave him a nasty smile. "It means their affinity isn't that strong yet because they haven't had the chance to _cast _that much magic. And there are children who've tested Dark. Those are the ones they're debating about cutting out of Hogwarts and insisting that they be monitored at home." He paused. "Still think the Ministry has a point, Potter?"

"I never thought they had a point about the children they tested, Muggleborn or pure-blood," Harry snapped back. "I thought they might have a point about _me, _because I did have that connection. No one else did."

"Yes, yes, you're unique," Malfoy interrupted, and stepped up, staring at him. "I'm only going to say this once, Potter. You take too much on yourself. Not all your uniqueness is evil, and not everything that happened during the war is your fault." He swallowed a second later, looking nauseated. "Don't make me say that again."

Harry laughed, and broke what he thought could have been an unpleasant silence when he did so. "Fine. So they've tested others in the Lightfinder, and they're discovering more Dark wizards than they thought they had." He turned to Greengrass and Parkinson, watching them with silent faces. "If one of us went and performed the Soul Revelation Spell, would they know what we were doing? Is it seen as threatening?"

"Who can perform it?" Parkinson asked. "Draco and I are wanted, and we probably can't do it anyway. They're watching you. Astoria can't use her wand without revealing where she is since she still has the Trace on it."

Harry snorted. "You can use mine," he told Greengrass, who tucked her elbows in and simply nodded. "But although they're watching me, there are times they do want me to use my magic, usually when I'm speaking to Splinter about Lethe. Would that be more acceptable? I'll ask about the spell and tell them that it seems to have the same effect as the Lightfinder, so I'd like to use it to monitor myself and make sure that I'm not becoming more Dark."

"That's an interesting idea, Potter," Malfoy said from behind him. "Where was this interesting person when we were at Hogwarts?"

"Too busy trying to survive to think about the larger issues of life," Harry told him dryly. "What do you think, Parkinson, Greengrass?"

"Call me Astoria," Greengrass whispered. "I think you should."

Harry glanced at Parkinson, who sniffed and stuck her nose up as if she wanted the ceiling to get a good look up her nostrils. "I'm not giving you permission to call me by my first name. When you've earned it, you'll know."

Harry barely refrained from rolling his eyes at her. "Very well. But what do you think about the question that I asked you?"

Parkinson hesitated, then locked eyes with him and said, "You know that I would have given you to the Dark Lord."

Harry just looked at her and didn't say anything. Yes, he knew that. But the way he saw it, the Ministry was the more pressing problem right now. If that was solved, then maybe he and Parkinson could go back to fighting about petty slights that had happened when they were children. Parkinson had wanted to give him to Voldemort, but she hadn't actually done it, which put her ahead of a lot of other people.

Parkinson seemed to want to work through it, though, so Harry gave her a small nod and waited.

"I want—I want to know that I can trust you," Parkinson continued in a low voice. "I want to make sure that you're not going to take it the wrong way, when we have to work together." She looked away again, but this time, Harry didn't think it had anything to do with wanting to give the bookshelves or him or even Malfoy a good look at her profile. "If you need to punish me or something like that for my ignorance, go ahead and do it now. Not later. And don't take it out on Astoria and Draco."

Harry hesitated. He wanted to say that it didn't matter, but that wouldn't work, because it _did _matter to Parkinson. He wondered what the hell he was supposed to do with an opportunity to punish his enemies.

He thought he'd never had the chance before. He'd been fighting Voldemort, who was never going to submit tamely to punishment, and he hadn't got the chance to actually ever use the Cruciatus on Bellatrix.

But he finally thought of something, and raised his wand. "I want you to make an Unbreakable Vow that you won't betray me to the Ministry."

Parkinson turned around and stared at him. "That's all?"

_What was she expecting, for me to torture her? _Harry wondered. And he wondered, too, whether she had been thinking about it in terms of him being a Light wizard, or a Dark wizard, or simply an enemy. But he refused to answer her expectations by doing something he wouldn't be able to live with later, no matter how good it felt at the time.

"I think that's enough," he said shortly. "You'll have the risk of death, and I can trust you absolutely that way." He looked over. "Be our Bonder, Malfoy?"

Malfoy was still, maybe remembering the Unbreakable Vows that had bound Snape and the part his own life and near-death had played in them. But then he shook his head as if waking from a dream, and nodded, and moved forwards until he was crouching solemnly in front of Harry. Parkinson came over a second later, and Harry knelt down to face her.

"You have to think about the wording of the Vow carefully," Malfoy said, his voice clipped. "Otherwise, she could die because of an innocent action. And the Vow has to have three parts."

Harry had already thought about it. He wasn't such an idiot as Malfoy sometimes thought him. He looked Parkinson dead in the eye. She was a little pale, but she knelt there and looked at him steadily enough.

"Vow that you will never betray what we're doing here by speaking a word to the Ministry or anyone associated with them," Harry said.

"I swear," said Parkinson, and Malfoy moved his wand, and Harry started as the first tongue of flame sprouted.

"You will never betray what we're doing here by _writing _anything to the Ministry or anyone associated with them," said Harry.

Parkinson gave him a glance that might indicate a little more respect. "I swear." The second tongue of flame connected their hands. Harry didn't think Parkinson's hand was sweating quite as much as it had.

"You will never betray what we're doing here by gestures or any other kind of action, to the Ministry or anyone associated with them," Harry demanded.

Parkinson gave another slow nod. "I swear." And the final flare of fire was there, and Malfoy's wand moved again, and then he stepped back and looked back and forth between them.

"You realize that the smartest thing for Pansy to do is just not speak or write to anyone outside our little group," he said, and then rolled his eyes. "Or wave at them, I suppose, or make hand signals."

"Yes, I know," said Harry. "That's all right. There are other roles she can play." He turned to Parkinson. "I haven't done much research in this library, because I don't know how. Can you? Find the Soul Revelation Spell, and the incantation and the wand movement, and what kind of restrictions might be on performing it? Knowing the Ministry, there's some."

"Yes," said Parkinson, and stood up and walked over to the bookshelves. Astoria trailed her, after a small glance at Harry. Harry tried to show her a smile.

That left Harry with Malfoy, who cleared his throat a moment later and said, "It's interesting, Potter, that you appear so much smarter now that you've acknowledged your Dark affinity."

"I'm smarter now that I don't have a war occupying my whole attention," Harry corrected him, and Malfoy looked interested and maybe a little impressed. "Now, come on. You're going to help me with the magical theory part of this, so I can give a good explanation when they ask me what's wrong with the Lightfinder."

He wondered if Malfoy would bristle at the order, but Malfoy followed him tamely enough to the bookshelves instead. His gaze was heavy on Harry, but Harry had lived with that since coming to the wizarding world. He would now.

* * *

><p>Draco touched his chest, where hope was stirring slowly to life again, a flame that had almost been choked by the ashes.<p>

_Potter's right. He can be more than just a figurehead._


	7. Wrestling With the Devil

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven-Wrestling with the Devil_

"You're ready for the next round of tests, Mr. Potter?"

Harry blinked and turned his head. He'd spent most of the morning in a blank grey room, unlike the days when they usually worked with him on Lethe. Then, he would be taken into rooms with various pools of water and wizards and splinters of wood and stones-all materials that Splinter said were set to become part of Lethe-and he would cast spells until the stones or wood or water resonated, or until the wizards responded with certain spells and nodded and wrote things down.

So this was a break in the routine. So was the way that Splinter, who had always seemed at least vaguely interested in Harry's fate so far, was calling him "Mr. Potter" and avoiding his eyes.

"I think I am," said Harry. "But there's something I wanted to know first. Something about the Lightfinder."

Splinter puffed up and took an important little side-to-side step. "Yes. It was mostly my work that got it ready, you know. Not the work of _any _dry old theorist they're crediting in the paper today."

Harry nodded and tried to look earnest and innocent and unaffected all at once. "But I think there are some spells that show the same thing the Lightfinder does, right? The same color of a wizard's magic and the size of their power by aura?"

Splinter stopped dancing. His eyes were cold and round as pebbles. "No. What's special about the Lightfinder is that it also measures the taint on the soul that Dark magic causes. Remember?" He was watching Harry with a special kind of caution now, his hand not hovering far from his wand. "No spell can do that."

This time, Harry tried for a look of innocent confusion. "But this spell is called the Soul Revelation Spell," he said. "I thought it would tell me everything. I thought maybe I could see if my soul has improved since we've been working on it and everyone has been helping me make sure that I don't do anything else Dark."

Splinter's mouth pursed and his eyes became narrow little slits instead of pebbles. "Who told you about that?"

Harry hung his head. "Nobody," he whispered, and tried to make it sound like he thought he'd done something wrong-the way he had, a few days ago-without having anything to feel really guilty about. "I was looking through books in the Black library, wearing gloves. I thought reading some books left by a Dark family could help me understand how to stop being Dark. I'd do the opposite of what they'd done, and I'd be cured."

Splinter didn't immediately accuse him of conspiring with Slytherins, which was something, at least, Harry thought, hanging his head and peering up from under his eyelashes. But Splinter did look as if he were drawing conclusions that tasted sour. A second later, he shook his head and turned to Harry. He was trying to look pleasant, but the inside of his mouth must still have tasted bad.

"Listen," he said, so calmly, so kindly, that Harry would have been inclined to believe him if he was a fool. "I don't think there's a way that you can do the _opposite _of most of what they did. You can't un-bait Muggles. You can't ease the Dark taint on your soul by casting Light spells."

"So the Soul Revelation Spell is a Light spell?" Harry brightened, and hoped that he was doing a convincing job of it. He probably was. If it was Light Arts, there was certainly the chance that they would let him cast it in their presence, which wasn't the case for a lot of the other spells. "I could still try it!"

Splinter reached out and put a hand like a crab's claw on his shoulder. "You have to stop thinking there's a simple cure for this, Harry."

_At least we're back to first names, _Harry thought. "I thought Lethe was a cure."

"But not a simple one." Splinter's smile was a little strained now. "That's why we have to spend so much time testing you, to make sure that we're not hurting you worse than you've already been hurt."

"Lethe touches my soul? Is it like the Soul Revelation Spell?" Harry would keep the topic of the conversation on that spell as much as he could.

"The spell doesn't have anything to do with your soul," Splinter all but snapped, and Harry made his expression as much like a beaten puppy's as he could, stepping back from Splinter and blinking rapidly.

"Despite the name?"

"Despite the name." Splinter was watching him with a cold air now, and he looked around as though he expected the bare walls to sprout rebels against the Ministry. "Who's been talking to you about these notions of Light and Dark and baring your soul, Mr. Potter?"

"I don't want to be Dark," Harry whispered, looking at the floor. "I don't want to be that way _anymore. _I thought there was a fast cure."

Splinter sighed. "There's no cure except time and remorse and Lethe. That's why it's new, and that's why we have to test it and test it to make sure that it's safe for you. I'm sorry, Harry. But that's the way it _has _to be." He patted Harry's shoulder, but it felt mechanical, unlike most of the other times he'd done it. "Come on. We have the next test ready now."

"Can't I just _try _casting the Soul Revelation Spell?" Harry asked, and he didn't care how desperate he sounded. He would probably _get _desperate in a little while, if he couldn't do something that would make Splinter pay attention and stop dragging him towards Lethe. Malfoy was right; who knew what that machine would do? They had been wrong about what the Lightfinder would do, and that might also be the case with Lethe.

"Why would you want to?" Splinter's face had closed, and his grip had turned to a pincer one on Harry's shoulder. "You can't cast it on yourself, anyway."

None of the books that Parkinson and Astoria had found had said that. It was possible, since Harry still didn't know a lot about the spell or the magical theory behind it, but he doubted it. He smiled, or he tried. "Let me try anyway? What harm can it do?"

"It could prejudice your soul as far as Lethe is concerned."

"_Why_, if it's not Dark Arts?"

Harry might have gone on arguing, but Splinter turned and flicked his wand. A spell Harry didn't know shimmered yellow on the end of the wand for a second, then shot up to the ceiling and splashed there in a fountain of sparks. It reminded Harry a little of the sparks that Hagrid had told him and Neville to shoot off in the Forbidden Forest that evening when they had first seen Voldemort drinking unicorn blood, but he doubted the purpose of this spell was as innocuous.

Harry seized his own wand, then breathed deeply when he saw the challenging way Splinter was looking at him. If he rebelled too much now, he might lose the chance to do it later. He would just be confirming their idea that he was Dark and defiant and couldn't be trusted.

He managed to release his wand.

Splinter gave him a hard smile and murmured, "You needn't fear that you'll go Darker than you are, Harry. We'll do _anything _to prevent that from happening." He turned around as the door opened, and nodded as several Aurors trooped in. "Ah, yes. It seems that Mr. Potter here is asking some questions that might indicate a further taint on his soul."

"All right," said the Auror on the left, a bulky man that Harry placed after a moment as an Auror called Rallan, one of the ones who had escorted him off the stage after the Lightfinder test. "Come on, then. You don't want to be Dark, do you?" He walked up to Harry with a strange, spring-legged walk that Harry knew meant he was preparing himself to strike back if he had to.

Harry exhaled noisily and faced him. "I don't," he said. "I was just asking for permission to cast a spell that was Light, not Dark! I don't know why Mr. Splinter is being so difficult." He cast an angry glare at Splinter and saw one of the other Aurors step promptly in front of him. He snorted despite himself. "What do you think I am, a basilisk? It's not like I can kill him with a look."

"I think you're a dangerous wizard," said Rallan. "I think that you might have forgotten yourself in your overriding exasperation and anger. I think I'm the one in this room who knows when Splinter needs protection."

His wand had come out, and Harry knew he had to calm things down if he didn't want to be caught up in a magical duel that he might not be able to win. He held his hands out from his sides and smiled as serenely as he could.

"If I'm going to be deprived of the ability to cast even Light Arts," he said, "I wish someone would have told me. That way, it wouldn't have come as a nasty surprise."

"You're deprived of the ability to cast Light Arts, or any, spells that can be cast in an aggressive way." Rallan didn't put away his wand, but nudged Harry in the middle of his chest, and Harry obediently turned towards the door. "That's a truth you ought to have anticipated."

Harry turned his head. "The Soul Revelation Spell is aggressive? Even if I'm using it on myself?" That was certainly not something that Parkinson and Astoria's research had turned up.

"Casting any spell that we don't want you to cast is aggressive and unpermitted," said Splinter, but his voice was loud and hasty in a way that told Harry he hadn't anticipated having to say that. That meant it wasn't the simple truth, either. "Come on, Mr. Potter. Let's get you to your test, and then you can go home and cast that spell on yourself if you really want to."

Harry walked quietly out the door. This wasn't the day that Lethe would be ready, and he didn't see any reason to resist the test anymore. He might already have earned enough valuable information that it wasn't worthwhile prolonging the confrontation.

It was _strange, _that's what it was. Why would someone care about a Light spell? And if they did know that the Soul Revelation Spell would show them the same things that the Lightfinder would, why waste all that time developing the machine in the first place? The one thing that Harry never doubted was that the Ministry wanted to avoid unnecessary time and expense.

It wasn't a key to everything that puzzled him about the Lightfinder and the panic over the Dark that had suddenly sprouted up in people, but it was a clue. Harry would ponder it until he could get back to Malfoy and the others.

* * *

><p>Draco lifted the book above his head. This was one of the older tomes in the Black library, and even with Preservation Charms, the pages had become as thin as onion sheaves, the markings on them hardly legible. He raised his wand and cast a <em>Lumos <em>Charm.

There was a bang, and Potter's house-elf appeared in front of him. Again Draco had his wand drawn before he thought about it. The Auror invasion of Astoria's home had apparently lent him all sorts of new reflexes.

"Master Malfoy might be hiding!" The house-elf's eyes were almost revolving in their sockets, Draco thought, his heart sinking. "And the mistresses! Aurors be walking through Master Potter's house!"

Draco wanted to question the elf, especially about whether Potter was with the Aurors, but he doubted it. Even if Potter was, it was all too clear that he wasn't directing the search.

He nodded and gave the book to the elf. "Put this back. Hide the others. Hide all traces of our presence."

The elf bowed back to him and vanished, as the book floated to the shelf where Draco had got it. Draco held back the impulse that told him to run and shriek in search of Astoria and Pansy. Kreacher was going to warn them, and he could do it faster than Draco could. Likewise, he would hide all traces of their possessions and stay in the bedrooms, better than Draco could. There was nothing like an elf's magic for dealing with a house.

That left Draco to find a hiding place. One that couldn't be pierced by an Auror's detection spells. One that he had to find in a house that was entirely unfamiliar to him.

He felt panic gnawing along the edges of his mind, and he shut his eyes and forced it down. No. He would-

A slight creak startled him. Draco spun around with his wand in hand, ready to strike and damn the consequences if the Aurors were already here.

No. In the end of one shelf, the paneling stood open. Draco, approaching it cautiously, saw that it appeared to lead to a hollow space behind the books, running parallel to the wall. He had never even thought the bookshelf looked strange, because of the size of those tomes and the way they seemed to press against the back of solid wood.

He didn't have a clue as to why it had opened now, although from the slight, pleasant buzz he felt in the back of his mind as he stepped into the space, he thought it probably had to do with his mother's blood. Perhaps the house was attuned to the needs of Blacks and would open like this for any family member who needed it to.

Draco pulled the panel to, and inched along the narrow passage that opened up in front of him. And it was a passage, not just a hiding place. Although he had to turn sideways most of the time to get along it, and the dust was everywhere, Draco could see the shadow of stairs at the far end, and other, faint lines in the wall that were probably doors.

Other bookshelves? Leading where? Draco's fingers itched. He doubted even Potter knew, because he wasn't a Black by blood.

On and on Draco inched, until he reached the stairs. When he lifted his wand, he could see that the steps went down, rather than up. They grew steeper and smaller the further they descended, and towards the end, Draco could see dirt in the walls that surrounded them. He nodded. They probably burrowed under the garden.

He paused and listened, but he could hear nothing from inside here, not even terrified shrieks. He hoped that meant Kreacher had hidden Pansy and Astoria the way Draco had told him to. Kreacher probably knew other hiding places that could contain people who were Black guests.

At least, Draco hoped he did. He could honestly do nothing about it now. Too many footsteps would have alerted the Aurors that Draco pictured pouring through the Floo.

That meant he was free to explore. And he followed his instinct down the stairs and around in a cramped spiral that was probably meant to save space inside walls this pressing.

Draco ended up with his arms clamped against his sides, marching with his wand dangling down next to his hip, so the light would at least illuminate the next turn of the stairs. At least it was nearly impossible to stumble. He could catch himself instantly on the close-packed dirt and stone that surrounded him.

When he reached the bottom, he stepped onto what he thought was hard-packed dirt for a second, but his feet rang oddly, and so did his hand when it struck the wall. Draco bent his head. Beneath his feet, and all around him, was carefully-laid brick.

Draco blinked. Some wizarding houses were built of brick, but the older ones, like the Manor, usually had mostly stone walls, and at least some wood mixed in as well. This was odd. He only knew a few places that regularly had brick, especially brick on the floor, for easy cleaning.

So he wasn't surprised, after a few turns in that narrow tunnel, to locate a Potions lab as the ceiling and the floor widened out at the same time, dropping Draco into a huge brick-lined basin.

Draco didn't know _why _one of his ancestors would have wanted to bury a Potions lab beneath the house. But when he cast his wand-light around, he could see that it was still clean, probably as a result of more of the humming wards draped over the place. When he conjured dust onto one of the great tables, just as a test, it vanished immediately. Draco nodded, impressed.

The main furniture of the lab consisted of six enormous stone tables, all of them supported by six sturdy legs, set in a circle around the drain in the center of the lab. In one corner stood a stone shelf supporting a huge stack of cauldrons, most of them pewter, but a few silver, and one golden. The notched shelf for the vials was made of stone, too, the first one Draco had ever seen that way. He supposed that was no more likely to shatter glass than the wooden ones normally employed. He cast a few detection spells to make sure he wasn't triggering any traps, and then picked up the nearest vial.

Draco had to catch his breath. The liquid inside slid back and forth, golden enough that he didn't need the neatly-written label to tell him what it was, even though he glanced at it. _Felix Felicis._

It might not still be good, of course. But when Draco uncapped the vial and sniffed, a faint smell of sun-drenched grass rose from the liquid. Yes, it was good.

"How interesting. You would be a descendant of mine, I suppose. But the blond hair is rather unusual."

Draco kept from dropping the vial through a massive effort of will that clamped his fingers around the glass. After a moment, he turned and sent the light scattering through the room. If there was a fireplace, he hadn't yet seen it.

On the wall, when he finally looked for it where he ought to have in the first place, hung a large black picture frame. Draco could have believed it was made out of iron, or the stone that everything else in the bloody place seemed to consist of. In it, painted against a background of bookshelves and a single green rug illuminated by a blazing lamp, stood a wizarding portrait of what must be a Black, given his thick dark hair and his bright eyes.

"Who are you?" Draco asked.

"The owner of this lab." The man smiled, and shook his head. "I should be the one asking _you _that, because you're the one who doesn't look like a Black and doesn't look like he has any reason to be here."

Draco stiffened his back and made his voice as challenging as he could. "You _must _know that I'm a Black, because you can see how the wards on the lab welcomed me."

The man watched him a little longer, then snorted. "Fine. My name is Aster Black."

Draco searched his memory for a while, although to be honest, his mother had only made sure that he knew the names and right positions of his ancestors in his family tree. She hadn't spent a lot of time on deeds. "Are you one of the family members who got blasted off the tapestry?"

Aster shook his head, looking slightly irritated. "Are they still doing that? The tapestry never lasts long, with all the damage done to it by those spells." He sighed. "No. I was the father of Sirius, Phineas, Elladora, and Isla Black."

Draco did a few quick calculations in his mind. "Then I must not know who you are because it was too many generations back. My mother taught me the generations back to your children's."

"Your mother, then." Aster nodded. "That would explain the hair, if your father is who I think he is." Draco looked an inquiry, and Aster gave him a viper's smile. "It's not hard to tell a Malfoy from the color of his hair."

Before Draco could say anything, Aster added, "But that doesn't mean I can guess your name, or the name of your mother. I would appreciate it if you could clarify for me."

"Draco Malfoy," Draco said. "My mother is Narcissa, your great-great-great-granddaughter. I think," he had to say a moment later, and he felt silly, and wondered if Aster would despise him for not knowing his genealogy well enough.

But instead, Aster had a faint smile curving his mouth. "So she gave you a Black name after all? And you the only Malfoy heir?"

Draco nodded because he thought it the right thing to do. Aster inclined his head. "Well. Then I can welcome you properly, Mr. Malfoy. You're the first of my descendants to find my lab in at least two generations, and the first one who didn't have Black as a surname. If I can help you, I will."

That last statement sounded oddly formal. Draco disregarded it, though. He could use Aster's help. "Good. We have a political situation on our hands at the moment. I'm only in the house at all because I was forced to flee my previous sanctuary thanks to Ministry interference."

Aster sneered a little. "Is this about Muggles again?"

Draco shook his head. "The Ministry thinks that it's created a way to identify Dark wizards based on a taint in their souls. They use a machine called the Lightfinder to do it. They've already identified a powerful wizard as Dark, and they're using another method called Lethe to try and 'cure' him."

Aster stared at him. "If he's powerful, why does he allow this?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "He's showing a little sense at last, but he grew up thinking he was Light. And he grew up in the Muggle world, which is worse. And he wanted to be Light so badly that he let them do whatever they wanted."

"What is his name?" Aster asked that with a peculiar emphasis, leaning forwards.

Draco paused, but he didn't think this was a trap. For one thing, if Aster could leave his portrait, he probably knew this already, and for another, there was absolutely no indication that Aster wasn't a Black. He had to be, and that meant he would want to trust and protect family above all else.

"Harry Potter."

"The only heir of Potter?" Aster asked, his hands tightening on what looked like a small side-table, though from the angle Draco was standing at, it was hard to tell what was what in that part of the portrait.

"Yes. Although a half-blood," Draco had to add, so Aster wouldn't have _too _high a set of expectations for Potter. "And the current owner of the house, since my cousin Sirius was the heir and willed it to him."

Aster smiled more deeply instead of looking incensed at that information. "I think we have a lot to plan and do," he said. "I know things the Ministry has forgotten, some things it needs to be reminded of."

Draco smiled.


	8. Aster's Help

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Aster's Help_

Harry sighed shakily as he stepped through the front door of Grimmauld Place. The "tests" today had been harder than normal. He'd had to stand for hours with his wand held out straight in front of him, and Splinter hadn't even allowed him to lower his arm when it began to tremble. Harry's shoulders ached as though he'd been carrying boulders.

He moved into the kitchen, hoping resentfully that he wouldn't have to endure much more of this before he and the others could go public with some of the information Astoria and Parkinson had discovered. Harry knew it was important for him to hold onto his temper and not lash out as long as they were being discreet, but it physically hurt, sometimes, trying to hold the magic dancing in his blood back.

He paused when he looked at the sink. There was a pile of tumbled cups in it. Kreacher wouldn't have left them like that, and none of the Slytherins showed signs of knowing what a sink was for.

Harry turned slowly around, his wand out. The kitchen pulsed for a second with a sense of danger. Harry shook his head, wondering if he was being paranoid or not, and summoned Kreacher.

Kreacher appeared bowing from the waist. "Nasty Aurors is invading Master Harry's privacy," he said haughtily, straightening up. "Kreacher is sending them home with things to think about."

"What happened to the Slytherins?" Harry asked at once. "Malfoy and the others? And what did you do to the Aurors?" He knew Kreacher couldn't have done anything too awful, or he would have suffered and mentioned it, but still. Harry had never heard about punishments for a Dark wizard's loyal house-elf, but the Ministry might be in the mood to come up with some.

"Kreacher is hiding Master's friends," said Kreacher. "And Master Malfoy is discovering secret passage that is only opening to one of Black blood."

Harry nodded, glad that the Aurors hadn't apparently discovered—whatever it was they were looking for. _Not that invading my house when I'm not here isn't bad enough. _"And what did you do to the Aurors?"

"Kreacher is saying—" Kreacher's eyes bugged out and his hands clenched for a second in a truly terrifying way that wouldn't have made Harry surprised to see claws appear on his fingers. "Nasssssty intruders to be disssssrupting Masssster's privacy! Naughty intruders! Nassssty things!"

Harry blinked. "And they didn't think you were—I mean, they didn't try to hurt you?"

"No," said Kreacher, and his face was once again normal. Well, normal for Kreacher anyway, Harry admitted. It wasn't like Kreacher had ever looked cheerful and helpful, the way Dobby had. "Aurors is understanding that nassssty intruders cannot be harming Kreacher in the house he is bound to." He nodded, satisfied.

"Huh," said Harry, although he supposed it made sense. The Aurors weren't members of the Black family and couldn't order Kreacher to punish himself, the way that Lucius Malfoy had been able to order Dobby. "Then you could show me where Malfoy is hiding? We have to discuss what to do about the Aurors."

"I already have an idea, Potter."

Harry jerked and turned around. He hated being surprised, and his wand was aimed before he sighed and lowered it. "Don't do that, Malfoy." Then he caught sight of Malfoy's face, and blinked. "What _happened _to you?"

Because there was a spiderweb strung across Malfoy's forehead, but he showed no sign of noticing it. He was still peering at Harry with a radiant expression that made Harry smile without meaning to. If Malfoy had looked like that when he was eleven, Harry _would _have wanted to be friends with him.

"I found a portrait of one of my ancestors down in the secret tunnel that the house showed me," Malfoy said without preamble. Well, Harry reckoned he _had _asked him the question that way. He inclined his head. "Come with me, and I'll show you."

* * *

><p>"Well, Draco, you didn't tell me that this Harry Potter had some blood claim to the house after all."<p>

Draco blinked and stared at Aster. He had opened his mouth to explain the potions lab and Aster's presence to Potter, teasingly withholding comments until they were down the stairs and actually in front of the portrait. He hadn't expected the narrowed eyes and the way that Aster almost leaned out of the frame so he could see Potter.

Potter, for his part, didn't seem surprised. Perhaps he was prepared by the mention of a portrait. "I don't know what you mean," he said. "I'm related to the Black family, I reckon, but it has to be distant."

"It has to be within the last two generations," said Aster, and his voice was sharp. "I know the color of that hair, and it's _not _a Potter trait."

Potter blinked and raised a hand to touch his messy mop. Draco was in silent agreement. He had never seen a Black with hair like that. "But I look just like my dad. Everyone tells me that."

Draco cocked his head at the trace of anger in the back of Potter's voice, but once again Aster interrupted before he could ask the question. "Then the ones who tell you that are fools. The messiness probably _does _come from your rather uncontrolled line." Aster's voice was dry. "But the color…don't tell me that you can look at me, or at this godfather that Draco says you had, and not see the resemblance."

Potter paused for a long moment, maybe racking his brains. Then he said, "Well. I reckon that Dorea Black was my grandmother."

Aster sighed. "Then leaving the house to you wasn't out of the question after all. I had been going to question my great-great-grandson's wisdom in leaving the vaults and properties to a mere godson."

Potter's eyes had a sudden, ferocious gleam, but he only shrugged and said, "The relation is distant. I never knew anything about it because I grew up in the Muggle world after my parents were murdered."

Aster stared at him. Potter seemed to have taken some pride in shocking him. He stood there with his hand on his hip, his arm cocked, and his wand near his fingertips, though Draco didn't imagine what he thought he could do to a portrait. He did cast one glance at Draco. "Your ancestor is a bit of a tight-arse, Malfoy," he murmured.

"Your ancestor, too," said Draco sweetly, and saw Potter blink hard, his eyelashes fluttering.

"Fine," said Potter a second later. "_That's _going to take some getting used to." He shook his head and turned back to Aster. "What exactly is it that you think you can help us with?"

"Knowledge that the Ministry has banned, and which would be useful to a pair of rising Dark wizards." Aster seemed to be over his shock, and was sitting back against the bookshelf that formed the largest part of the painting, his hands clasped in front of him. "Or even to the revolutionary movement that Draco tells me you hope to start."

Potter nodded, eyes calm and alert. "Like what sort of knowledge?"

Draco raised an eyebrow. _Interesting. _He hadn't asked Aster that question, because Aster had moved onto promising that they could use the lab as a sanctuary and that the potions he had left behind, like the Felix Felicis, had no traps on them. Draco had been more interested in that than the specific knowledge he promised.

But he did wonder, now, exactly what rituals or spells Aster could reveal to them. He turned to face the portrait, and saw a savage smile on his face.

"I need to know what your power is like, first," said Aster. "There are some spells that you can't perform without a great deal of strength."

Potter and Draco exchanged a look. Then Potter shrugged and said, "I could do a Patronus at thirteen."

Aster was studying him again, eyes as intent as if he suspected Potter would turn into an enemy. "But you're a Dark wizard instead of a Light one?"

"That's my affinity," said Potter. "Are you going to hand us anything useful or not?"

Draco choked a little. "He's being _helpful_," he muttered to Potter, and didn't try to keep the reproachful tone out of his voice.

"Not so far." Potter folded his arms, a gesture that made him look extraordinarily stubborn, as though waves could dash at him and not move him from his place. Draco had to wonder where that stubbornness had been when the Ministry was the one trying to move him.

"It's a fair question," said Aster, although Draco thought he saw a flash of clenched teeth. "There is one particular spell that might be helpful. It reveals the thoughts a particular person has concerning you. It makes them audible as a small voice murmuring directly beside their ear. _They _can't hear it, because they think it's only the voice of their thoughts. The spell's only limitation is that you can't cast it in front of anyone who isn't a co-conspirator of yours, because someone else not targeted by the spell can hear it."

Potter nodded, and dropped his arms. "What's the incantation?"

Aster started to speak, and then paused and regarded Potter. "Perhaps someone with your power can manage to perform it on the first try, after all," he murmured. Regardless of whether that was true, Draco thought, Aster would try, because he wanted to see what Potter's magic was like. "The wand movement is like this." He raised a hand, his two middle fingers clamped together and pointed out, and swept them in a little flick as if he was tracing a backwards capital J in the air. "The incantation is _Audio mentem_."

Potter repeated the Latin words to himself for a moment, as though checking them for traps, and then nodded shortly and raised his wand. For a second, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Draco had no idea what he thought he was doing.

He exchanged a look with Aster, and saw Aster's lip curled. Maybe their ancestor didn't like Potter's dramatics any more than Draco did.

But Potter murmured the spell and performed the incantation as flawlessly as he could, Draco thought. Yet nothing seemed to happen. Draco stared at Potter. What was he doing? Did he think that using a Dark spell would make a difference to the way he felt about himself now, or that the Ministry could tell he had cast it without a test?

"No. But I _am _interested in the amount of antagonism I can hear in your thoughts," said Potter dryly.

_Of course he targeted me with the bloody spell. _Draco breathed in to overcome his anger. "You realize that I'll do the same thing to you."

"Yes," said Potter. He leaned back gently against the wall and murmured, "_Finite_," canceling the spell, Draco hoped. It was extraordinarily disconcerting, not being able to tell whether he was keeping his thoughts to himself or not. Draco reckoned that was probably part of the reason the Ministry had designated this spell as Dark.

"Right now," Draco added, and glanced up at Aster once more. Aster, who was observing them with an intent, entertained expression, obligingly demonstrated the wand movement again.

"All right." Potter still didn't flinch, and Draco concealed an irritated sigh as he lined up so that his wand was aimed at Potter in the right way and he wouldn't hit the portrait with the spell. Where was this defiance when it came to the Ministry? Why did it take so long for Potter to realize who his actual enemies were?

"_Audio mentem_," Draco murmured, and this time, he felt the little tingle of power pass through his own wand, something he hadn't been able to feel, of course, when it came to Potter. Potter narrowed his eyes for a second as though squinting into strong sun, and Draco experienced a momentary spasm of doubt. He _hoped _that he'd been able to cast it right the first time. It would be embarrassing if he didn't.

"He's annoying."

Draco started. The voice sounded exactly like Potter's, and it was all too clear, from the way Potter blinked at Draco, that he didn't hear it.

"He thinks I'm not doing enough. What exactly am I supposed to be doing? I'm not going to cast Dark spells that maim and torture people, but this sort of spell is okay. He's probably not going to accept it until I torture someone, though."

Draco canceled the spell with a furious flick of his wand, and stalked up to Potter. Potter watched him come with an infuriating calm.

"You could at least _look _as though you respect me," Draco snapped.

"No offense, but I've been intimidated by the best, and you're not Voldemort _or _Snape," Potter said, and then he closed his eyes and sighed. "Why is it so easy for us to fall back into this rivalry?"

Draco was about to tell him why—because Potter had never valued him enough, from day one—but Aster cleared his throat. Draco turned to face his ancestor. After a moment, so did Potter.

"I can tell you why," said Aster. "And this is without knowing much about your history. You're too much alike. You're both proud. You both think that the other person should respect your skills and your power without demonstration. You, Mr. Potter, think that Mr. Malfoy should share your moral standards, because they're self-evident." He nodded at Draco before the smug expression Draco could feel forming on his face could take full shape. "And you, Mr. Malfoy, think that Mr. Potter should turn on the people who betrayed him _because _they betrayed him."

"Why not? It makes sense!"

There was an odd echo to his words, and for a moment, Draco thought that Potter had used that spell again, or he hadn't canceled the one that let him hear Potter's thoughts. Then he realized he and Potter had spoken at the same time.

They glared at each other.

The way Aster cleared his throat had a distinct sound of laughter in it. "Why don't you talk about this more? All of the spells and rituals I can teach you are useless if you work against each other instead of together."

And he walked out of his portrait, which answered Draco's question about whether he could move. Draco frowned and turned to Potter. "You drove him away."

"I think that he left for exactly the reason he said he did, to give us time to talk about it," said Potter, and walked past Draco towards the entrance of the lab. "Why don't we go upstairs and get Parkinson and Astoria out of hiding? They might not know they can come out yet. And I'm hungry. We can have tea and a discussion."

Draco followed, attempting to get his fuming under control. How dare Potter sound like the reasonable one?

_ You don't have to do the opposite of what your father does to make your point, _his mother's voice said abruptly in the back of his head, startling Draco so badly he almost wondered if someone had cast that spell on him again. But no, this was the way she had spoken to him after some long-ago quarrel with his father in which Draco had tried to make the point that he was enough of an adult to be trusted with magic that Lucius didn't want to teach him. And then he'd gone off and cast it anyway when his father refused, and his mother had visited him in his room to make her little speech.

_There are other roles for you than his enemy._

Draco swallowed back longing for his parents and nodded. Good advice then, good advice now. He would have to take it.

He followed Potter's unyielding back down the corridor and up the twisting steps back into the house proper.

* * *

><p>"You should dust your secret passages more often, Potter."<p>

Harry gave Parkinson a mechanical smile, keeping his eyes mostly on the teacups and scones that Kreacher had made for him, and away from Malfoy. The portrait's cynical words still echoed in Harry's ears, and so did the knowledge that Aurors had come and investigated his house while he was out.

He couldn't trust the Ministry, that much was official now, and he didn't even know if he could trust his allies. Was it his letter to Kingsley that had alerted the Ministry something wasn't right? Even though Harry had tried to be so careful?

And was his old rivalry with Malfoy going to damn any effort they made against the Ministry before it could get started?

At least Malfoy didn't seem inclined to complain right now. He was sitting in the chair on the other side of Astoria, talking to her in a soft, individual murmur that was easing the pinched look from her face. Harry gave her a compassionate look she didn't have to return. He supposed it couldn't be easy for a sixteen-year-old to be hunted from her home like a fugitive, and then nearly suffer the same fate in what she had been assured was a safe sanctuary.

Malfoy had already told Parkinson and Astoria about Aster, but neither seemed inclined to bring it up until after their tea, when Parkinson put her cup in Kreacher's hand without even looking at the little elf and asked Harry, "What are we going to do about Aurors intruding when you're not here?"

"There's a spell I know," Harry began reluctantly. He had read it in what now seemed that heady, sunny month after the war before the Lightfinder had been made public, when he had gone to funerals and helped take care of George and spent time with his friends and read whatever he wanted. He had come across the spell in a book that had some banned magic in it, and laughed. He couldn't imagine wanting to use it.

"Well?" Parkinson prompted impatiently.

Harry grimaced and said, "It's a ward that interferes with memory because it makes you laugh so hard at something innocuous that happens after you cross it, you forget all about what you'd gone into the place to do."

Parkinson's eyebrows rose and stayed there, appearing plastered against her fringe. Then she twitched her head a little and murmured, "Well, if that's the way it has to be."

"And this spell isn't classified as Dark?" Malfoy interrupted.

Harry told himself, again, that he and Malfoy had to get along for everybody's sake, and that Malfoy had probably only spoken that way because he was impatient to get the details and see the spells cast. Not because he wanted to insult Harry or thought Harry couldn't do it. "No. Because it makes people laugh instead of having another effect, they decided that it wasn't dangerous enough."

"But it interferes with memory," said Astoria, speaking up and then ducking her face back behind her hair when Harry turned to her. Harry wished she wouldn't. It made her look fearful instead of strong, and he doubted that was really true.

"It does," Harry agreed. "In fact, it interferes enough that the person who touches the ward will imagine that they _did _do whatever they came to do. But Memory Charms are legal, and they couldn't make this illegal without touching those, too."

"What fascinating books you did read, Potter," Malfoy murmured. "The only question is why this didn't make you rebel against the Ministry _earlier_."

_So that thought I heard wasn't a passing one, _Harry thought, blinking at Malfoy for a second. Having Harry as an ally now wasn't enough. Malfoy wondered why he hadn't rebelled earlier, and he probably took any questioning that Harry did of him now personally, because it felt as though Harry was still more suspicious of Malfoy than he was of the Ministry.

Harry could at least answer the question, although he didn't know if it would lay Malfoy's suspicions to rest. "I don't think the Ministry is _good, _exactly, but they told me what the Lightfinder supposedly detected, and I thought they knew better than me. That they were closer to the Light."

Malfoy's face closed a little. "And you can't stop thinking that we were closer to the Dark."

Harry was proud of himself, because he didn't glance at Malfoy's left arm. "Yeah. I'm still getting used to thinking of this as my affinity." He swallowed back other things that he wanted to say, and would have if they were alone, but not in front of Malfoy's friends. "But I'm going to employ that spell Aster taught us against Splinter tomorrow, if I'm alone with him, which I probably will be. And that ought to cure me pretty fast of any lingering fondness in that direction."

Malfoy spent a moment staring, then nodded slowly. "In the meantime, what is our longer-term plan? What happened when you discussed the Soul Revelation Spell with them this morning?"

"I got wands pointed at me, and Splinter telling me it was an aggressive action." Harry winced a little at the bitterness of the memory, which had faded somewhat while he was talking to Aster and fighting with Malfoy. "They _really _didn't want me to perform it. Even on myself. They said it would be aggressive."

"Then you have to," said Parkinson simply. "Don't you want to know what they want to hide from you?"

Harry half-shrugged. "My only problem with that idea is that if they figure out I did it, they might take it for direct defiance and imprison me or something. Fat lot of good I'd be able to do then."

"I can see that." Malfoy leaned forwards with his hands pressing on the table. "But I think we need to know whatever it was they didn't want you to find out. Do it after you've put up the wards that will make them forget about what they came for."

Harry nodded. Malfoy's news had taken the impact away from Kreacher's story of the Aurors intruding, but the more he thought about it, the angrier he felt. At least, with most Dark wizards they didn't trust, the Ministry would simply enter the house when the wizard was home, arrest them, and dig through their artifacts or books or whatever other objects had provoked their suspicions. They didn't have to sneak in like they were spying on him.

_Even though that's probably exactly what they're doing._

As he stood to cast the wards, he paused and put his hand on Malfoy's shoulder. Malfoy turned around and stared at him in absolute shock. Astoria ducked her head, but continued watching them, and Parkinson found something intensely interesting to look at on the opposite wall.

"I'm sorry," Harry told him. "I don't mean to be like this. We're in this together, and it's hard to change my thinking all at once, but that doesn't mean I don't have to do it."

Malfoy licked his lips, visibly swallowed whatever he'd been about to say, and then mumbled, "I think—I think I was too quick to blame you for not turning your back on the Ministry right away, too, Potter. If you had, it wouldn't have boded anything good for _us._"

Harry smiled, said, "Thanks," and went outside to begin casting the wards.


	9. News of the Unhappy Kind

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine-News of the Unhappy Kind_

By the time that he'd finished raising the ward that would afflict the Aurors with laughter and memory loss if they dared to invade again, Harry felt a lot calmer. He could lean limply back against the side of the house and watch the colors of the sunset stain the sky, and feel, for a moment, as if he was a normal wizard with a physically demanding job, just enjoying a well-earned rest after a long day.

"_Harry_."

Then another voice he hadn't heard in too long called his name, and reminded him of why he wasn't.

Harry turned around warily. Hermione hadn't called him openly, the way she would if nothing was wrong. The voice had emerged from outside his wards, both sets, from a point of air that meant Hermione must be using the Disillusionment Charm.

Harry stepped up to the wards and stretched out a hand as if inspecting the new lines of magic he had just laid down. Then he pushed his fingers past the line, and wriggled them. Someone could cross them if they took hold of his hand, and the older wards shouldn't stop Hermione, who had permission to be here from before.

A fleeting shadow brushed his hand, then the unexpected grasp of fingers, almost shockingly strong when he couldn't see them coming. Harry turned and brought his arm back to his side as naturally as possible in case someone was watching, and then turned around and drew Hermione close into his arms.

"Go into the house," he whispered into her ear. "The kitchen only. Keep the Charm on. Don't be surprised by anything you find there."

Hermione drew in her breath sharply as if she wanted to object, but Harry had already propelled her on her way with a little push. He stood for a moment after that, still admiring the colors of the sunset. But his breath had gone shallow, and when he pushed his fringe back from his forehead, he felt the sweat.

_No normal life, ever again._

* * *

><p>Draco lifted his head when he heard the door open and shut. There was no distinctive sound of Potter, though. Despite sharing a house with him for such a short time, Draco had already noticed that there were ways Potter walked, as though he was almost stabbing his heels into the floor, that no one else did.<p>

That could only mean a stranger had entered the house.

Draco gave a thin smile and stood up, his hand on his wand. Pansy and Astoria silenced at once, and Pansy drew her own wand while Astoria leaned back in the embrace of the chair, watching them both.

If this was another Auror, Draco intended to use the spell that Aster had gifted them with. That way, he could know right away if the Aurors had any suspicion that Draco, or his friends, or any other Slytherins, were hiding with Potter. He would just have to make sure he could cast it nonverbally, which might take more than one try.

Draco thought he had the time, though. An Auror who would stroll boldly through Potter's front door would probably stick around, instead of running at the first unusual sight or flicker of magic.

Draco cast a minor Notice-Me-Not charm and came slowly down the stairs, edging sideways so that he would have even less chance of being seen. The soft footsteps still came from beneath him, not as bold as Draco had expected. Perhaps the Auror had enchanted Potter or sneaked past him, and that meant they would be more cautious than Draco had expected after all.

When Draco's head came around the wall at the bottom of the stairs, he saw nothing at all, although he distinctly heard sounds in the kitchen-and from the angle he was standing at, he should have been able to see into it. For a second, he blinked, disconcerted, and wondering if the Auror had stolen Potter's Invisibility Cloak.

Then he rolled his eyes at himself. _Disillusionment Charm. Of course. _He aimed his wand towards the sounds and breathed, "_Finite_."

The charm rippled and vanished, and Granger stood there, head turning around sharply when she found that she was visible again. Draco hastily pulled his head back behind the wall, cursing to himself. Had Potter even _thought _about the trouble Granger could cause if she found Slytherins hiding with him?

_Of course not. Probably not. He probably told her to just come in. Or she did it on her own, because she thinks that Potter's bloody house should also be hers-_

Draco caught himself up quickly. If Granger was under a Disillusionment Charm, that suggested she was trying to avoid someone, at the least. And Potter hadn't seemed, right before he went outside to cast the wards, as though he was in a hostile mood towards Draco and the others. He must have thought about it, maybe even warned Granger.

"Don't panic if something strange happens to me, right," Granger muttered to herself just then. A second later, Draco heard her making tea.

Draco relaxed muscle by muscle. So Potter had warned Granger, in a way, but without giving their secret away. It was still their choice if they wanted to meet Granger face-to-face.

It was the best compromise Potter could have managed under the circumstances, clearly. If this went on, Draco would have to think that Potter was capable of subtlety and nuance, after all.

_I'm not sure I want to do that, _Draco admitted, with a slight grimace to himself, and went back up to Pansy and Astoria. They hadn't got much of a chance to talk today, and he would rather do that than socialize with Granger, at least until he knew what her reaction would be.

* * *

><p>Harry stepped back into the kitchen, and blinked to find Hermione visible. She shook her head at him, small curls of frizzy hair escaping to hang around her mouth, and tucked it back. "Not my doing. Someone upstairs took off the charm."<p>

_Malfoy. Of course. _Harry sat down in his usual chair. "One of my guests," he said, and although Hermione nodded, her eyes bright with curiosity, she didn't push it. "What is it?"

For a moment, Hermione's hands clenched around the spoon she was using to stir her tea. Then she looked at him and said, "They put Bill through the Lightfinder."

Harry hissed a little despite himself. "Well, at least I'm awake now, the way you wanted me to be," he muttered. He _hoped _the news of Bill would have been enough to wake him up if Malfoy hadn't, but he honestly wasn't sure. "I trust they found him Dark?"

Hermione tried to swallow, but her words were locked behind what sounded like a large and solid lump. She shook her head, took a swallow of tea that Harry knew had to be scalding, and continued, "Indigo. They've confined him."

Harry closed one hand into a fist fast enough that his nails made a ringing scrape on the table. "And what excuse did they give?"

"Because-because of his heritage and his record, they think he was Light and only tainted by Fenrir Greyback's touch." Hermione peered at him around one strand of hair. "They-think they can cure him with Wolfsdemon."

"With _what_?"

"You need to read the papers more," Hermione snapped at him, a conclusion Harry had already come to. At least she sounded angry and in control again, and that was a Hermione he found easier to deal with. Hermione leaned forwards and rapped one finger on the table. "Wolfsdemon is this new potion that some people are promoting because they say it kills the infection right out of someone. It kills the wolf and leaves the person alive."

Harry stared at her in silent horror.

"I know," said Hermione, and seized her cup to swallow again. "I think it's terrible. But there are werewolves who support it because they hope it's an actual cure, and supposedly the initial tests are promising, and-and people are afraid." She set the teacup down and stared at Harry bleakly. "I thought things were getting _better _after the war. How did people become this afraid?"

"Maybe the fear is the opposite side of the hope. They thought they were going to have an easy way to identify Dark wizards, and that made them go mental when they realized how many Dark wizards were walking around." Harry reached out and caught Hermione's hand, holding it still when he thought it would twitch. "What made them test Bill?"

"They heard him saying something to someone else," said Hermione tiredly, blinking. Harry cast a Warming Charm on her tea without being asked, and Hermione picked up her cup and started drinking again with her free hand. "That's what Fleur said when I asked. He was complaining about the way you were being treated, I think." She looked up with a grim smile. "And who could have sympathy for a Dark wizard except another Dark wizard?"

"Then-Hermione, you shouldn't have come here." Harry gripped Hermione's hand even more firmly. "They could decide you were Dark and imprison you in the same way-"

"_No_." Hermione said it so firmly that for a second Harry thought she meant she'd gone through the Lightfinder and tested red or orange. But then she leaned towards him and said in a fierce undertone, "This has gone far enough. That's what I was trying to tell you last time. You have to do something about it, Harry. _Something_. You can use your name and influence in a way that lots of people can't. I _know _you can. I want you to do something that will stop this."

Harry blinked and spoke the truth before he could stop it. "You want me to save the world."

Hermione closed her eyes, and a tide of color crept into her cheeks. "Not alone," she said stiffly, keeping her head turned away. "Not the way you did with Voldemort. I'm sorry-I wasn't thinking..."

Harry sighed and squeezed her hand in a soft, regular pattern until she opened her eyes again. "Neither was I," he said. "You meant that you think I need to join the fight to stand up against the Lightfinder, and other people are more likely to follow me than someone else."

Hermione nodded fervently, her hair sticking to her forehead. "Exactly. And I think you need to do the same thing for _you_, because the way they're treating you is outrageous."

Harry nodded back. "I know. They had Aurors invade my house earlier today while I was with Splinter being tested for Lethe."

Hermione's mouth opened, her lips parting in silent outrage. Of course, since she was Hermione, her outrage wasn't silent for long. "_What? _How could they do that? Why were they here?"

"I think they thought I'm being rebellious already, and they were looking for Dark magical books or anything else that could cause this behavior." Harry changed the subject back to what he thought was more urgent. "Where do they have Bill?"

"In Azkaban."

Harry sat up with a startled sound, and Hermione caught his hand in turn. "They said it was the only kind of cell that someone with a werewolf's strength couldn't break out of," she said. "I hate it, too, Harry, but you can't tell me that you mean to charge the guards or something. That would only get you a cell beside him."

Harry forced himself to nod and sit back down. He had to think of how he was going to do this, as someone already under scrutiny and someone who might be trying to start a rebellion that had to be kept secret fairly soon.

But they wanted to spread the word at the same time. And Harry thought that being able to point to someone who had always been considered part of a "Light" pure-blood family as a victim of the Ministry's prejudice would be more effective than immediately trying to point at Slytherins.

"All right," said Harry. "There's someone I need to talk to, because they might have a more concrete plan to help Bill. But I don't know if you want to come with me when I talk to them. Or if they want you there," he had to add, in complete honesty. Malfoy might refuse to work with Hermione on general principles.

If he did it because of her Muggleborn background, then Harry would refuse to work with _him_ on general principles. But so many things had changed now, this might also have done so.

Harry was sure Malfoy had been the one who'd dissipated Hermione's Disillusionment Charm when she came into the kitchen. But he hadn't attacked her. Harry would take that as a favorable sign for the present.

Hermione cocked her head back and narrowed her eyes. "Harry, who are you hiding?"

"Several people," said Harry, and had to grin a little at her look of shock. She probably thought he wouldn't begin his rebellion until she brought him word of Bill's imprisonment. "But like I said, I have to decide whether they'll want to talk to you."

"Why would they refuse?" Hermione turned and stared at the stairs. "Or why would I?" She glanced back at Harry, her eyes narrowed. "That's the more relevant question, isn't it?"

"Because they're Dark wizards," Harry said quietly. "Not proved as such by the Lightfinder. Sure of their affiliation, though. One's wanted. One's been tried, but is still wanted." He met and held Hermione's gaze.

Hermione made what looked like a conscious effort to relax. "Well, you're a Dark wizard, too," she muttered, as if convincing herself. "I hope-Harry, is it going to be all right?"

Harry supposed that people must have some kind of instinctive need to turn to him in a crisis. But it was at least more understandable with Hermione than with someone who didn't know him from Dumbledore. He bent down and kissed her forehead. "I'm going to make it as all right as it can be. And we stand a better chance working together with other people."

Hermione looked at him with troubled eyes. "As long as they're not Death Eaters, or-or people who did something really wrong in the war."

Harry turned around to hide his grimace. Based on that criterion, Astoria might be the only one she was comfortable working with. "Well, let me go and talk to them," he said, and took the stairs before she could ask him anything else.

* * *

><p>Draco leaned back as Potter came into the room. "I would be willing to work with Granger if I can trust that she won't betray us, or make converting us more important than fighting the Ministry," he said.<p>

Potter blinked only once, and then seemed to accept both what Draco knew and what he was saying, to Draco's private relief. He sat down across from Draco. "My friend Bill Weasley is in prison," he said. "Someone overheard him saying something supportive of me, and he tested indigo in the Lightfinder."

Draco blinked, a little surprised at that. He honestly would have thought that most Weasleys would have a Light affinity.

But you didn't choose your affinity, and Draco couldn't afford to neglect any potential allies in this conflict. The only thing he wanted to be _absolutely _sure of was that they wouldn't betray him because he had been acknowledged as Dark for longer than they had. "I assume that his werewolf scars don't help, either," Draco murmured.

Potter leaned in. "The werewolf scars that _you _gave him, Malfoy."

Draco held his gaze, and nodded. "And I'll apologize for that to him. Not to you."

Pansy touched Draco's shoulder in the second before Potter decided to accept that. "Fine," he said. "But for now, we need to figure out some strategy to get him out of there as soon as we can."

"And in the long run, that depends on finding allies and strengthening your position as someone who's an innocent victim of Ministry prejudice," Draco pointed out. He wanted to hammer Potter with that idea, to keep it in front of his eyes as much as necessary. Charging to the daring rescue wasn't the point. Finding a way to make sure that the Ministry was ultimately defeated was the point. "They aren't going to kill him. Being in Azkaban is no treat, but they would have done something else if they were going to kill him."

"Being there is a sentence _no one _deserves."

Draco looked at him in silence, forcing him to remember that a lot of Death Eaters had been sentenced there.

Potter flushed and looked away. "You can't argue that Bill deserves it, anyway."

Because talking about their past was a waste of time, given the circular arguments it produced, Draco accepted that with a nod. "I don't think that that particular Weasley has done anything worthy of being sent to prison in the first place. The problem is that you need to raise a protest that will not just get him out of prison, but prevent it from happening again, or happening to anyone else."

Potter looked as though he was swallowing a particularly bitter potion. "I know you're right. It's just hard to think about it."

"I say that you should bring Granger up and introduce us," Pansy cut in. Draco leaned back into her briefly. She was the practical one, the one who saw past considerations that tended to preoccupy Draco to the basic and fundamental truths. "As long as you think it's safe for me to talk to her."

Potter peered at her in incomprehension for a second, but his face cleared before Draco could start fearing for his sanity. "Oh. Right. Yes." He hesitated, and looked at Draco. "Can an Unbreakable Vow be modified?"

Draco blinked once. "It can usually only be fulfilled."

"Then that's another thing we need to research," said Potter. "The Vow I had Parkinson make was a bit too broad." He turned back to Pansy. "You can leave the room if you want. I'll tell Hermione that you're here, but also what restrictions you're under."

Pansy nodded and slipped away. Draco concealed a smile. Pansy had considered Granger more unbending and self-righteous than Potter in Hogwarts, therefore more irritating. She might be glad that she wasn't accidentally going to ruin their plans, but she would also be more than happy to put off a meeting with Granger for a while.

"Fine," Draco said, leaning back. "Bring the dreaded Muggleborn upstairs."

* * *

><p>Harry was right behind Hermione, and he could feel the shudder of disgust that rang through her body when she stepped into the room and saw Malfoy waiting for her. But she straightened her spine, and her glance at Astoria was only considering. Maybe she didn't recognize her, but at least she didn't have the same past memories attached that she did to Malfoy. Hermione swallowed. "Malfoy," she said.<p>

"Granger." Give Malfoy credit, his tone was at least neutral and business-like, Harry thought. He turned his head to Harry, and blinked once. "Does she agree that we should wait to stage a raid on Azkaban?"

"She does." Harry made his voice dry. Perhaps Hermione and the Slytherins could find a common ground in their attempts to combat his impulsiveness. "Though I would like to still hear about a way we could help Bill."

"We need more allies." Hermione walked across the room and sat down across from Malfoy, in Harry's abandoned chair, with only a twitch of her shoulders to indicate her discomfort. "Four of us aren't going to be enough."

"No," Malfoy concurred, though Harry saw the spark in his eyes that must mark the moment when he considered reminding her about Parkinson, who Harry had mentioned on their way up the stairs, and then discarded the impulse. "The main problem is knowing who to trust. I have a few friends and allies, but they'll be closely watched by the Aurors as well. And I have no idea who among the Light wizards is trustworthy."

"I know one person I'm sure won't betray us," said Hermione. "Neville Longbottom."

Malfoy made a swift gesture with one hand, but then cut it off. Harry thought he'd probably remembered the old Neville for a moment, the shy, clumsy Potions-whatever-the-opposite-of-a-genius-was, and then remembered the one who had cut off Nagini's head instead. "Does he really have the political clout to help us, though?"

"Right now, we need trustworthy allies more than we need politically influential ones," Hermione snapped, and her chin jutted out, leading the way as it usually did when she argued with Malfoy. "He's one."

"And he is a war hero, if not one as instantly recognizable as I am," Harry added, hoping to calm things down. "He might even be more popular right now, since the news about me being tainted has come out."

"_Dark_."

Harry blinked at Malfoy. "What? You think Neville is Dark? Or what I just did is a Dark action?" Despite all his commitments to a truce with Malfoy, sometimes Harry felt as if they stood on opposite sides of a gap of incomprehension.

"You're Dark. Not tainted." Malfoy's fingernails scraped the table as he stared at Harry. "Not that word. I don't want to hear you say it again."

"Well, _really_," Hermione said, and even Astoria looked a little surprised. But Harry, who couldn't take his gaze from Malfoy, thought he understood.

Malfoy couldn't tolerate certain attitudes from Harry, because he had to have a hundred percent confidence in him. It was the way Harry couldn't have worked with Malfoy if he was still flinging the word "Mudblood" around. Too many flaws in their trust would make them doubt the whole idea of the alliance, and it would fall apart without at least the fragile trust they'd put together before Harry went out to do the wards.

Malfoy wanted Harry to claim his affinity. Fine. He could do that. He had already done it the minute he let the Slytherins into his house, anyway.

"Dark," he replied, and watched a tide of relaxation wash over Malfoy. He leaned back, and his smile sharpened.

"I think Longbottom might be just the ally we need," he said. "Especially if he can get together with Blaise, who already took a huge risk to help us."

And the moment passed, and soon Malfoy and Hermione were plotting, and arguing, as if they had worked together before. Harry stayed out of it, much like Astoria, unless someone asked his opinion. His gaze didn't often stray from Malfoy.

The man was more interesting than Harry had expected.


	10. Messengers to the World

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten-Messengers to the World_

"I still don't like it. I had to tell you that."

Harry paused and looked down into Hermione's face. He had escorted her into the kitchen so they could say good-bye and she could leave, cloaked in Disillusionment, through the front door. It was safer than trying the warded Floo.

"You don't like what?" Harry had to ask, because no matter how long Hermione stood there and gave him that peculiarly piercing look, he wasn't picking up on whatever she wanted him to pick up on.

"Working with Death Eaters," said Hermione. "Other people I can stomach. They didn't do as much bad during the war as some of the exaggerated rumors make out. Or they did it to survive. But Malfoy..." She shivered a little. "No matter how indecisive he was, he still stood there and let Voldemort brand _that _on his flesh."

"Then why did you work with him?" Harry asked, bewildered. It wasn't like Hermione to sit there and subdue her natural criticism of something or someone when she had already proclaimed that she would talk about it.

Hermione sighed, and for a second, her head drooped as though she was finding it too heavy to hold up. "Because I could see in your eyes how much you already trust and rely on him. He's the one who's giving you the impetus to rebel against the Ministry." She looked up, and this time, her gaze was searching. "He was _also _the one who gave you the information about Dark and Light affinities in the first place, isn't he?"

Harry didn't look away, because that might make Hermione think he felt guilty, and actually, nothing could be further from the truth. "Yeah," he muttered. "It-it makes sense, Hermione. I don't think the Lightfinder works exactly the way the Ministry says it does. I think the Ministry has to be stopped."

Hermione's hand found his and squeezed firmly. "I know that," she said. "I'm not sure that the methods Malfoy will come up with are the best ways to do it." She hesitated, and then abruptly flung her arms around him. Harry, startled, hugged her back, and her face nestled into his chest the way it had sometimes on the Horcrux hunt.

"I know that someone has to stop them," she whispered. "And you have the determination and the strength to do it. And I'm _trusting _you, Harry, trusting you to know what's best, and that is the _only _reason I'm working with Malfoy at all. I'm trusting you not to have made a mistake, the same way you trusted me all those years." She drew back and gave him a direct stare. "Don't make a mistake."

Harry nodded, touched, beyond words. Hermione had not only given him the same trust he had always thought she would, in putting him above the rules, but she was also laying her principles on the line for him. He squeezed her hand and finally managed to come up with the words he had to use. "I don't think it's a mistake."

"Good," said Hermione, and then she turned and cast the Charm and left the kitchen without another word. There really wasn't anything else she had to say, Harry supposed.

He stood there and breathed for a little while, and then he went upstairs and back to Malfoy and the others.

* * *

><p>Draco clutched his wand hard enough that he thought for a second it would snap. But then he forced himself to put his hands in his pockets, loosen his hold on his wand, and walk with the swagger that the man he was glamoured as would feel. He was taking a risk, trying to meet with Blaise in Knockturn Alley, but going into the Ministry would have been riskier.<p>

Knockturn Alley still hummed with Dark magic and the sound of trading that it always had, despite the public's panic over Dark wizards. Draco curled his lip. The Light wizards in control of the Ministry might bleat about wanting every trace of "evil" in their world eradicated, but they also wanted illegal ingredients sometimes, or forbidden pleasures. Knockturn Alley had survived all these years by being too useful to destroy.

It was Draco's job right now to see to it that that went on being true, rather than the Ministry succumbing to panic or public pressure and destroying it whether or not they wanted to.

"Landover! I haven't seen you here in years!" Blaise's voice said heartily from his left, and he came up and slapped Draco on the back. "Do you think you can spare the time for a drink? Or are you going to stalk off again, the way you did to me the last time we met?" He stood slightly in front of Draco so anyone watching them from the main street would find it hard to read Draco's face.

Draco adopted the peculiar cringing sneer that Henry Landover would use if he was so bold as to come here. The Landovers were a minor wizarding family who claimed descent from a bastard child of one of Draco's ancestors, even though magical testing had proven long ago that was false. They played out a minor version of the politics that had obsessed Draco's father, and they would do things like come into Knockturn Alley thinking it was a grand adventure.

"I'm not going to _stalk _off," he said, and it wasn't a problem to raise his voice a little and adopt the whining tone that was also natural to the Landovers. "I was coming to see you, in fact." He made an attempt at a smile that Blaise returned with a predatory grin.

"Of course you were," said Blaise, and then turned and led Draco swiftly towards the other end of the Alley. Draco followed him with his head down, his gaze darting from side to side as if he was nervous about the beings of greater power he might encounter here-also a natural reaction for a Landover. Draco wouldn't have felt such contempt for them if they'd merely had the power to match their pretensions.

But no one was looking at him. Instead, people scurried around with their heads down, even more than usual, and there were fewer hags and warlocks parading down the middle of the pavement, daring anyone to object about stepping aside for them. Draco nodded grimly. The Ministry might not have the courage or the strength to destroy Knockturn Alley after all, but the worry was being felt here.

"Here," said Blaise, and jerked his head to a stone doorway that looked like the entrance to a dragon's lair. Draco willingly ducked in, and sighed when he felt the wards engage behind him, snapping together like the edges of a Muggle zipper.

"You're sure that no one is going to find us here?" he asked, turning around.

Blaise had his wand drawn, adding an extra layer of protection to the wards. He shook his head without looking at Draco. "This is one of the places where my mum hid-well, some of the bodies," he said, and turned around, gesturing to the table in the center of the room. "Sit down and eat, if you want. I had it cleaned."

Draco grunted his thanks and stepped up to the wide table, made of age-darkened wood, the only furniture of any size in the Zabini lair. The rest was mostly cauldrons or the sort of tiny stools that one could balance cauldrons on. And while there _were _stains on the table that made him a little uneasy, it had been scrubbed and bore wide china plates of cut cheese and fruit, and that was the best anyone could ask for.

"What do you want me to do?" Blaise asked Draco, coming up behind him as he hungrily ate a few fat strawberries. There were just some things Potter's house-elf couldn't do well.

Draco paused and looked at him. Blaise's face was blank, but it would be a mistake to think he was passive because of that. "You sound as though you're surrendering yourself to my guidance," Draco said, and swallowed. "Why?"

"Because I know what you're trying to do." Blaise's eyes were wary when he met Draco's, but he was speaking with commendable directness, something that a lot of Dark wizards Draco knew couldn't do. "And I agree with it. This nonsense is going to touch every single one of us sooner or later. Even the people who think they're immune."

He was sneering, and Draco knew he was thinking of someone specific. Still, he didn't want to ask right now. Blaise wasn't the sort who would let grudges interfere with business.

_The way I once was, _Draco thought, and took a folded note from his pocket. "We need you to do something. However, I want you to look at it and think about it before you agree. One of Potter's little friends would do it without thought, but it's incredibly dangerous."

Blaise smiled a bit as he took up the note. "So you did manage to convince Potter to accept an alliance? He's under suspicion in the Ministry now, you know. They think he doesn't have enough of a stick up his arse or something." He unfolded the parchment.

"I know," said Draco. "Several Aurors came into his house the other day looking for whatever influenced him."

Blaise twitched. "And they didn't catch you?"

"The Black house is friendly to a Black," Draco said, with a smile. That was all he intended to tell Blaise for now. He was in agreement with Potter that Aster and the secret passages were some of their most important weapons, and shouldn't be revealed until they had to do it. They could easily enough pretend that the old spells Aster was showing them came from books in the large Black library. "And I want you to _think _about this."

Blaise read through the instructions slowly. Then he leaned back and stared at Draco. "Is this a long-range plan or a short-term one?"

"Short-term," said Draco quietly, and stared back.

Blaise looked down at the parchment again. Draco saw his hands tremble. He frowned and opened his mouth. He had come to Blaise because Blaise worked in the Ministry, wasn't yet under suspicion or on the list of people to be tested in the Lightfinder, and had some of his mother's talent for eluding suspicion. But fear could cause people to make mistakes, and Blaise was his friend.

"I want to do it," said Blaise, and his voice was thick. "You have no idea how much I _want _to do it."

"But?" Draco prompted. The shaking hadn't been fear after all, he thought, but excitement.

"I don't know if they would manage to dismiss it as just another Dark wizard trick." Blaise corkscrewed his neck to the side and squinted at the parchment as if it hid a solution to its own dilemma. "Is there something we can use to show them that this spell is Light instead of Dark, when most people think being Dark is just a matter of a tainted soul?"

Draco relaxed. That was the same objection Potter had come up with, and Pansy had searched until she found a solution-one reason it had taken them four days to put together this plan. "Yes. That's why there's that extra part of the incantation at the beginning there. It causes a huge burst of timed light that will only explode around you when you're finished. Harmless, but it's red. They favor red light at the moment."

Blaise squinted at him. "Draco, no one is stupid enough to believe that it's a Light spell because there's red light when it's cast..."

Then he trailed off. Draco smiled at him and nodded. "Exactly. They were stupid enough to believe in the Lightfinder. And it's that stupidity we're targeting."

That had been the subject of an argument with Potter. He had wanted to work towards a way to show up and announce in front of everyone what Dark and Light affinities really meant, and that Dark wizards weren't all baby-eating puppy-killers. But Draco had pointed out that, for now, the same fear and nonsensical beliefs that had isolated Potter in his house had to be their weapon. Open announcement would come later, when they had enough of a power base.

_Make them afraid that they'll be summoned and put through the Lightfinder. Publicize the imprisonment so that they wonder if they might suffer the same thing even though they _know _they're innocent. Herd them in our direction the way the Ministry managed to herd them in theirs._

Not honorable, but Draco was fighting for his life and his freedom, and the safety of people he cared for. He was prepared to be as dishonorable as it took, while clothing his actions in the right cant.

"I don't know that it'll work when they see a Dark wizard casting it, though," Blaise returned to the attack.

"Then don't let them see you casting it," said Draco idly, and tossed a piece of the fruit that he had picked up from the plate from one hand to another, debating eating it now or taking it with him. Practicality won out, and he popped it into his mouth. "I know _you _know how to bland with a crowd and cast under shelter of your sleeve."

Blaise took one long look at the parchment again, then firmed his mouth and tucked it out of sight. "Can I let my mother help?"

Draco felt himself smile without permission. Angelica Zabini was a woman who had ties everywhere, to relatives of ex-husbands and people who might have become husbands and people benefited by the deaths of those husbands. It was one of the two reasons she had managed to keep out of prison so long after so many deaths, the other being that air of essential innocence Blaise also had. "Isn't her current lover someone in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?"

"Aaron Barnes." Blaise grinned. "Yes. He runs a sleepy little office no one pays much attention to, but that makes him perfect for passing messages. And he can get good seats at the crowd entertainments like the Lightfinder operations as long as he doesn't ask for the privilege too often."

Draco nodded back. He honestly didn't know what Blaise's mum saw in a minor Ministry official, but right now, it was going to prove extremely useful. "All right. Then let her do whatever's not going to get her and you caught. And don't leave a trail that leads back to Barnes, either. We might want to use him later."

Blaise sighed elaborately and tucked the spell away in his pocket. "Draco, I was learning how to do this while you were still hitting Greg over the head with your toy broom. Leave it to me."

Draco grinned at him, and bit into his next strawberry.

* * *

><p>Harry sighed and massaged his temples. He was once again alone in the room where they'd left him to eat lunch, and he thought he was going to lose his fucking mind.<p>

The tests to prepare him for Lethe, or Lethe for him, had turned from strange and seemingly pointless to hard enough to exhaust him. This morning, he'd had to Summon a cup and make sure that he stopped it in midair a meter away from him. Then he had to bring it closer, and then he had to do it nonverbally.

Harry had never before realized that he tended to use all his spells in a huge, burning rush of power, that it was hard for him to stop them or make them more delicate or not complete them all at once. Or that making any of those changes to the basic way he cast magic would _hurt _so much. His muscles throbbed.

Something silvery glowed in front of him, and Harry looked up. A misty mastiff sat there, staring at him.

Harry looked back at it and tried to remember who he knew that had a mastiff Patronus. Not Kingsley's, that was a lynx, and Ron's was a terrier, and Hermione finally had a silvery otter darting around her every time she cast the spell. Besides, they would still let her talk to him at the Ministry, even if she had to sneak into his house-

The Patronus opened its mouth and said, "Harry, Hermione told me we needed to talk. I'll see you at seven this evening."

Harry gaped for a moment as the Patronus dissolved, and then began to grin and couldn't stop. It continued even as he ate the dry cheese sandwiches the Ministry provided him, and although the Aurors who came in to take him for the next test gave him suspicious stares, Harry could only relax the grin to a normal smile.

That had been Neville's voice.

* * *

><p>Longbottom came into the library taking up more space than Draco thought he should.<p>

He supposed it had been some time since he had looked at Longbottom, properly _looked _at him, but even so, he was bigger than he had any right to be. He had grown tall and sturdy, and he listened when people spoke, but he also turned his head and spoke right back to them. His confidence filled more of the room than his voice did, and nearly as much as his long, constantly in-motion limbs did.

Draco sat back and observed him for most of the first hour, while Potter did the talking and Astoria, who had no more history with Longbottom than with any of the other Gryffindors, put in several opinions. Longbottom was courteous enough, but whenever he wasn't talking to Potter, whenever he was only listening, he watched Draco with intense, piercing eyes.

Draco fought to keep a patient smile or a blank mask on his face. Longbottom didn't need to go through the Lightfinder; Draco could tell what he was from the way that his own aura seemed to prickle along in sweat on his skin. _Light. Definitely Light._

Which meant, if the Lightfinder worked at all according to the magical theory that the Ministry had claimed it did, then Longbottom should test red or orange. And that meant they had one ally who should be able to walk around freely after he had his test, and who they never had to worry about being arrested.

If he would just stop looking at Draco with those _eyes_.

"So that's it," Potter wound up his summary of their plan at last. "What do you think, Neville?"

Longbottom leaned forwards and tapped a finger on the table beside the map that showed several places in the interior of the Ministry that they were considering either distributing pamphlets or letting off certain specific spells. "What they're doing to you is outrageous, Harry," he said, his voice deep. "And to Bill."

He turned to Draco. "You, I'm not so sure about."

Draco experienced a shiver that he thought could have been either dislike or distaste. He held Longbottom's gaze and said, "Well. In that case, I've already been tried for my crimes. They should have told me that they _also _wanted to imprison me for being a Dark wizard. They didn't. They just started hunting for me the minute I left the place of my sentencing. What have I done wrong that I wasn't sentenced for? They don't say."

There was a long moment that felt important, as though Longbottom was musing on the claim, and their plans wouldn't work out if he didn't accept it. Then he gave a short, choppy nod.

"Just as long as you don't expect me to condone Unforgivables or any other Dark spells," he said.

"We'll leave you out of that part of the plans," said Draco shortly. He wasn't going to tell Longbottom about Aster or the Black secrets, if that was his attitude. He glanced at Potter. "Have you made arrangements to cast the Soul Revelation Spell?" Potter should have done it already, but it never seemed to be the right time; they were plotting with Granger, or they were putting up wards, or they were studying the magic Aster had given them, or Draco was going to visit Blaise.

"Yes," said Potter slowly. "But it's strange. I seem to keep forgetting the incantation each time I memorize it." He frowned and turned to Draco. "I was hoping you would cast it on me and tell me what it looks like."

"What is the Soul Revelation Spell?" Longbottom asked calmly. He hadn't reacted to Draco's comment about leaving him out of certain parts of the spells, but he looked back and forth between them now expectantly, as though of course their plans wouldn't go forward until they'd explained.

That assumption of control irritated Draco, but he also found himself responding to it. He said, "It's a spell that reveals the colors and power of a wizard's magic. Rather like the Lightfinder. It was misinterpreted in earlier times as showing the soul, and the name stuck. But it's widely understood now as just a spell that shows magic, not the soul."

"So it _is _like the Lightfinder," Longbottom muttered.

At least that meant he believed the Lightfinder was not what the Ministry claimed already, and they wouldn't have to convince him. Draco nodded. "Yes," he said, and faced Potter. "I have the incantation in mind, and I only need a moment to practice the wand movements. I can cast it on you."

"Good," said Potter, and stood up, bracing his hands on the table as he faced Draco.

Draco paused, a little startled, when he saw the gleam in Potter's eyes. He was suddenly sure Potter hadn't forgotten the incantation at all. He had simply wanted to show Longbottom that he trusted Draco to point a wand at him and cast the right thing, instead of a harmful spell.

_Sometimes, Potter has a true Slytherin's cunning, _Draco thought respectfully, and took another minute to practice the wand movements, as he had said he would. The last thing he wanted to do now was mess it up, in front of an audience.

When he was finally ready, he faced Potter and cast the spell, slowly and without the flourishes he would have used for a spell he knew and was trying to impress someone with. The power seemed to flow through his wand like a great river, sluggish on the surface. Beneath, Draco felt the current that sprang out and arched towards Potter.

The actual spell was invisible, but its effect certainly wasn't. In seconds, Potter began to glow like a fairy light, with the aura, shaped roughly like a silhouette, extending a good distance away from his body.

And that aura was indigo.

Draco took a deep breath and glanced at Longbottom. His eyes were fastened on Potter, and his face was blank for a second. But then he nodded and huffed out a breath.

"Yeah," he said, and turned around to face Draco. "Harry trusts you. That means I can work with you, for now." He jerked his head at the aura shimmering around Potter. "And _that _looks exactly like the Lightfinder. Which means we can't trust the Ministry when they say that their machine displays someone's soul. And we have to stop them."

In those words, as inexorable as boulders rolling down a mountainside, Draco heard the promise of their first real alliance with a Light wizard, and smiled.


	11. Drawing Near

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven-Drawing Near_

"This would be easier if you would give us clearer instructions," Potter muttered to Aster, taking a step back and shaking his head as though someone had tried to fling a net around his ears.

"It would be easier if you had ever cast Dark magic before this," said Aster. He had somehow changed his portrait a bit, so that he had a couch in it before the bookshelves instead of a chair. He lounged on the couch, watching Potter with critical eyes as he dragged the leg that Draco had turned to stone behind him. "You have talent, but you're too slow. You hesitate to use offensive spells instead of defensive ones."

"I was talented in Defense Against the Dark Arts, not Dark Arts," Potter muttered to himself, and he frowned down at the leg. Draco had to turn away with a small cough so he wouldn't burst out laughing. Potter looked so confounded when he stared at the result of a relatively simple spell. "How do I get this back to normal?"

"The countercurse should be obvious," said Aster. "You'll have learned hexes that turn a whole body to stone, surely. The spell to reverse that and the spell to reverse a spell on a single limb are related." He sighed loudly and shifted his position on the couch. "Do you mean that ridiculous division still prevails at Hogwarts?"

Potter was engaged in casting fruitless _Finites _on his leg and didn't answer Aster, so Draco reckoned it was up to him. "What do you mean?"

"The division between Dark Arts and the defenses against it," said Aster. "How can one separate them? Surely you have to know the curse as well as the countercurse that defends against it."

Draco shrugged and leaned against the wall beside the portrait, watching in interest as Potter moved on to stronger spells. At least he hadn't insisted on remaining with Light magic once he realized it wouldn't work. "I wouldn't know. My father was on the Board of Governors, but I don't recall him talking about that decision. They must have made it before his time."

"They were moving in that direction when I was alive," said Aster grimly. "I taught _my _children Dark Arts at home, of course. That was accepted and respectable for wizards then."

"No wonder all the Blacks were mad," said Potter, without looking away from his stone leg.

Aster stood up from the couch, bristling. Draco watched Potter thoughtfully instead of joining in the outrage. Potter had done this several times now: made a remark that seemed calculated to provoke Aster and then stood there and listened to the tirade with what looked like a pretense of indifference. But Draco was no longer sure it was a pretense. Maybe Potter really _didn't _care about the outrage so much as the information that Aster would let slip when he was ranting like this.

That meant Aster was telling them, explaining to them, more than he meant to, instead of trickling the information out drop by drop. And it meant Potter was much more manipulative than Draco had thought he was, as well as much more mistrustful of their helpful ancestral portrait.

Draco would have to think about that.

"It is your family, too," Aster began. He always started with a similar statement. "You don't have parents. I thought you would at least _like _to know more about your closest living wizardly relatives."

"I'd like to know more about them," said Potter, and his wand flicked back and forth, hard, tapping across his leg. As Draco watched, the tone of his flesh began to melt over the stone once more. Potter sighed and turned his head so that he was watching Draco and Aster again. "But most of them aren't alive, either. And they would have hated a person like me."

"Many of my children and grandchildren would not have been ashamed to marry or father a half-blood," said Aster.

Potter smiled, but said nothing. Aster turned to Draco. "_You _understand the importance of family," he said. "And the importance of knowledge. We have to keep certain histories alive, or our descendants won't understand them. You agree that we should teach both Dark Arts and Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts?"

"I think we should," said Draco, which was only true. "But I don't see what that has to do with the Black family."

"When I was alive," said Aster, and sat down on the couch again, so he could see both of them at once, "I was the patriarch of a family that wanted to _know _things. We recorded old spells. We kept alive customs that had been current two centuries ago. And we learned Dark Arts and Healing Arts and Light Arts, the ones who had the power for them, the spells that they wouldn't learn at Hogwarts and the ones they would. I can't believe that I have to rely on only _one _descendant who has any kind of a passion for this."

"I would have more of a passion for the Dark Arts if I hadn't had so many people try to kill me or torture me using them," Potter muttered. His leg was entirely flesh again, and he straightened and flexed it. Draco caught himself watching the way that Potter's robe fell back down his leg when he stood up, and wondered how Potter had figured out the counterspell so quickly. Draco didn't know it himself.

"Dark Arts are a branch of knowledge," said Aster impatiently. "The same spells could be used to either Heal or cause someone pain, depending on how one cast them. That doesn't mean we should ban all Healing magic because someone _somewhere _might cause their patients pain."

Potter cocked an eyebrow, but said nothing for a moment. It was Draco who murmured, "Is all the knowledge that your descendents recorded in the libraries upstairs?"

"Of course not," said Aster. "For some of them, the knowledge was too much, and they did destroy the books when they turned their backs on us or fled to join the Muggle-lovers. And some is recorded in me." He looked as smug as Draco thought only a Black could. "And there are some hidden libraries in other houses that used to belong to our family and don't anymore. But a lot of it is up there."

"Good," said Draco, and caught Potter's gaze. "Then we should go up and spend some more time looking for it." They still needed effective communication spells that would let them spread the word about the Lightfinder and what a deception it was before the Ministry could shut them down.

Potter nodded, and moved away from the portrait. Aster watched him all the way across the room, and then moved his head to Draco in a decisive nod, the sort of gesture his parents would use when they wanted him to stay nearby instead of leaving.

Potter paused in the doorway and glanced back at him. Draco said, "I'm just staying here to converse with Aster a moment," which was true, no matter how much it looked as if it annoyed Aster.

Potter only shrugged and left the room. Draco studied him a moment to make sure he wasn't limping from his recent transformation of his leg from stone to flesh, decided he wasn't, and faced the portrait. "Yes?"

"You _could _tell me whether you think Potter is trustworthy," said Aster, sounding as if he had asked this several times and Draco had refused to answer. "Someone who does not value the Dark Arts, who does not want to be a Dark wizard, who makes no distinction between wizards who tried to kill him and the spells they used? What do you think?"

Draco shrugged. "He's only been used to thinking of himself as a Dark wizard for a short time now. I wouldn't judge him for that. And he managed to survive the Killing Curse from a point-blank range. I agree that it wouldn't be a good idea to bring up the notion of using Unforgivables around him any time soon."

"But the rest?"

"The rest," Draco echoed blankly, not sure what Aster meant.

"Can we trust him to stay true to our goal of bringing Dark wizards into prominence and power again, saving them, defending them?" Once again, the couch had vanished from Aster's portrait. Instead, the chair was back, and Aster was walking restlessly around it, pausing to drum his hand on the back. "Will he stay true to you, or betray you if his Light allies want him to do it?"

"I don't know."

Aster paused and turned his head towards Draco, frowning as if Draco had offered to bring a torch towards his painting and burn it. "What? You're allies with someone you can't trust?"

"I can't trust him completely because we used to be rivals, and he's new to thinking of himself as a Dark wizard, and he has different principles than I do." Draco folded his arms and gave Aster a faint, nasty smile. "Just like I can't trust you completely because your goals aren't mine. I never said anything about bringing Dark wizards into political prominence."

"How else do you think that you're going to have the safe and free world to live in that you talked about?" Aster snapped. "You really think that _Light _wizards are going to guarantee that for you?"

"I think that they won't do it on their own, but some of them will help," said Draco calmly. It was fine, really, being able to do something that teased and irritated Aster. "And I might not be able to trust them completely, but I can trust them to keep their words. Which means I just need to get some oaths from them."

"Oaths of secrecy, I assume," said Aster, and he was watching Draco the way he sometimes did when Draco argued with Potter too much for them to be able to use the knowledge Aster wanted to teach them. "Not oaths of loyalty."

Draco thought about Longbottom, and then about Granger, formidable in her own way, and shook her head. "I wouldn't dare demand those kinds of oaths of them."

"_Dare_," Aster repeated, and stalked out of the portrait frame.

Draco waited a moment for him to come back, then shrugged and made his way up the stairs. He didn't find Potter waiting for him there, or in the narrow passage that made up the back of the bookcase at the top, which was more self-control than Draco would have credited Potter with.

He was in the library, though, sipping from a bottle of some golden liquid that Kreacher had probably brought him. He looked up when Draco came out, let his lips twitch a little, and asked, "Did you have a good plotting session?"

"It's not like that," Draco said, and took his seat across from Potter. Kreacher appeared with a similar golden bottle, and Draco accepted it and swallowed absentmindedly. The next second, he bent double from the wave of heat that flashed up his throat. "Sweet _Merlin, _Potter. You could have said something."

"I would have, if I had known that you were going to drink it straight off like that." Potter grinned at him. "This is Emberwhisky. Like it?"

"I've never heard of it." Draco stared at the bottle in his hand for a second, and then took another, more cautious sip. He supposed the flame was less than you would get in Firewhisky, hence the name, and more of a sweet glow in the center of his chest instead of one that felt as if it would burn out the inside of his mouth. Still, the color didn't lead you to suspect you were going to be drinking anything _nearly _that strong. "Where did you find it?"

"Kreacher told me that the Blacks had some stores of it." Potter twitched a shoulder. "I reckoned I could use it, as the owner of the Black estate. Although..."

Draco looked at him. "Yes?"

"Aster doesn't like that I'm the owner of this house, does he?" Potter leaned forwards. "That's what you were talking about down there."

"He doesn't like that you were so recently a Light wizard," Draco replied. He was going to tell the truth around Potter, so that he didn't end up with a situation worse than it was already. The last thing he needed was to make enemies out of his allies, as well as the Ministry. "He _does _wonder where your true allegiance lies."

Potter's mouth twitched violently for a moment, and then he snorted and applied himself to a long swallow of Emberwhisky. "What does he want?"

"For me to request oaths of loyalty from the Light wizards working with us."

Potter nearly choked on his drink, but Draco got no satisfaction from it. "Rest assured, Potter, I'm not going to do it," he said dryly. "Both Granger and Longbottom would laugh in my face, and-"

"I know you wouldn't do it," Potter said, and shook his head in wonder. "I'm just surprised that he would even think we had to do it. Does he dislike Light wizards in general, or is it that Hermione's Muggleborn and the Longbottoms were enemies of the Blacks, or something?"

"The Blacks intermarried with them just like they did everyone else," Draco said, a little uneasy. "But sometimes I wonder if Aster left his portrait before I met him and he knows more information than we think he does. Although even then, I don't know what he thinks he can gain by antagonizing us."

"I don't think it's antagonism he _means, _exactly," Potter said, as if feeling the outlines of a new idea. "I think it's manipulation. That he's not very good at."

Draco opened his mouth, then thought through what he had been about to say and shut it again.

"What?" Potter demanded.

"I was about to say that no ancestor of mine would fail to be good at manipulation," Draco muttered. "And then I realized how strange a thing that was to feel insulted by. In this case, if Aster is attempting to manipulate us both to finish some sort of plan that he hasn't informed us of, then it's _preposterous _for me to wish he was better at it."

Potter laughed aloud, and Draco knew the sensation of being in the charmed circle of that laughter that he thought Potter's friends had always felt. He knew the laughter wasn't _at _him, and it burned and rang in his ears in a way that suggested Potter was about to make marvelous things happen.

"No, I know what you mean," said Potter, and propped his chin on his fist. "I felt the same denial the first time I heard that my father had been a bully instead of the hero I wanted to picture. And then I had to make myself calm down and realize, no, that wasn't some lie, and I couldn't expect him to be a hero all his life. Why would he have known when he was fifteen that he would face Voldemort when he was an adult? It was silly to expect it of him."

Draco found it hard to take his eyes from Potter. Professor Snape had spoken to him a few times of James Potter, and had also said that Potter knew of his father's bullying ways and would never accept them. Potter sounded from his words just now as if he _had _accepted them, and it wasn't even something Draco had brought up or mentioned.

It wasn't even _about _Snape.

Draco felt a stab as he wondered how Professor Snape would feel, to know that Potter had forgotten him so completely and gone on with his life. Draco shivered the feeling away and asked, "Do you think we can trust Aster enough to take the knowledge from him?"

Potter nodded. "Whatever he's up to, I doubt that he would really want to sabotage his plans this early on. And his knowledge of spells doesn't necessarily have to be bad for us, provided that we test all the spells he teaches us and ensure that they _do _work the way he's described. I'm more annoyed that he's decided to test us like this than anything else. It's going to-"

Draco started as something shrill and blaring screamed in his ear. That was nothing compared to Potter's reaction, though. He was on his feet in seconds, whirling around with his wand in his hand.

"What's that?" Draco whispered.

"Someone broke the wards on my Floo to come through," said Potter grimly. "Which means an identical alarm just rang in the Ministry."

Draco stood up, a hand on his wand, and cast a soft spell that would let him know where Pansy and Astoria were. Neither of _them _seemed to have moved from the floor below, where they had gone to study a few books taken from a different Black library. Pansy had told Draco excitedly that morning that they were on the track of something big, a spell that might be able to conceal a wizard's affinity from a machine like the Lightfinder. Draco had wondered if they could really _use _a spell like that. The point was to get the Ministry to stop using the Lightfinder, not to trick it.

But in the meantime, there was a different point. Draco eased up until he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Potter. Potter gave him a single look out of the corner of his eye, and then seemed to decide that Draco was harmless compared to whatever had come through the Floo. He didn't even flinch when Draco's wand jostled near his back.

"Kreacher," Potter said, in a voice that reminded Draco of Parseltongue.

Kreacher appeared, and looked between the two of them in a way that made Potter ease up on the tension, although Draco was perfectly willing to keep it going. "What is masters doing?" Kreacher demanded, with a little frown. "There is being an intruder?"

"The alarm rang," Potter said. "Are you saying that it's not more Aurors coming back, or an enemy?"

"Is being Master Harry Potter's Weasley." Kreacher turned to Draco as if he could help the elf understand Potter's absurd behavior. "Is blood traitors no longer being welcome in the Black house?"

"Ron wouldn't come here unless something was really wrong," said Potter, tensing more at that revelation, and then he was out of the room, blurring down the corridor with a speed that made Draco believe he really had been training for the Aurors before this whole debacle with the Ministry took place. Or maybe he had got _really good _at running in the last year, on this mysterious quest that he'd decided to drag Weasley and Granger along on.

Draco had no admonitions or scolds to offer, not right now. He followed silently.

* * *

><p>Ron was pacing in the drawing room on the ground floor as though he hated the carpet. He spun around when he saw Harry, and came running over to him. His face was like a sheet of paper, his eyes like black markings on it.<p>

"They have Fleur."

Harry controlled his impulse to run out the door, and held Ron's arms in his hands. "You triggered an alarm when you came through the Floo," he said. "We'll probably have Aurors here in a few minutes. You tell me what you think is most important, and then we're going to get you into hiding."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Malfoy at the bottom of the stairs, regarding him and Ron attentively. Harry stared at him. He would have thought Malfoy would seek shelter the instant he realized Ron was in the house. Irritated, Harry motioned with his head at him, but Malfoy only stood there and watched with what looked like fascination. He wouldn't move even when Harry hissed at him, a sound that was pretty close to Parseltongue and had unnerved more than one person.

Ron glanced distractedly over his shoulder and barely reacted to the sight of Malfoy, something Harry knew would have infuriated him at any other time. "Mate, what the _hell_-" he said. "When did they start watching your Floo?"

"Since they started to suspect he had a brain of his own," said Malfoy.

Harry rolled his eyes and said, "Did they put Fleur through the Lightfinder? Did she attack Kingsley? What?"

"Neither of those things," Ron said, shaking his head and managing to settle his attention on the matter at hand, which Harry had to admit was impressive of him. "She tried to Apparate to Azkaban and break Bill out."

Harry closed his eyes and gave a weary curse. That was the sort of thing that would _force _the Ministry to respond. Sort of like the alarms ringing on his Floo. Kingsley would probably be sorry, the way Harry thought he was sorry about what had happened when they ran Harry through the Lightfinder, but he couldn't prevent it from happening, and by now, events were pushing along, sliding along.

"This is what we're going to do," he said, and his voice was deliberate. He felt it calm down Ron, because he was touching Ron at the time, and that was sort of unmistakable. On the other hand, Malfoy's hostility was palpable. He never _had _liked being ordered around, Harry thought, even by people trying to save his life. "You're both going to hide, and so are the other people here, and I'm going to meet the Aurors or the other people they send in. I'm going to say that I know all about Fleur, and I want to meet with her. Maybe I can persuade them to let her go. If not Bill. They have children. There's stories that circulate about how Veela aren't rational when their mates get locked up. I might be able to make them back off on a move that know is going to be unpopular with some people once it gets out."

"That's bollocks," said Malfoy softly. Harry opened his eyes and saw Malfoy watching him with a hawk's hungry look. "That's not what you're planning on doing, because you know it's not enough to hold back the tide. Some people might not like her imprisonment, but they'll be in the minority. And the Ministry might want to release her, but they wouldn't only on your persuasion, now that you're suspected Dark. What are you _really _going to do?'

"No _time_," Harry snapped, because he could hear the Floo chiming, insistent. The Aurors would probably come in unannounced if they had to, he thought bitterly, but he wasn't ready for that yet, given his new wards. He didn't want those discovered until there was no other choice. "Take Ron and Pansy and Astoria and _hide_." He thrust Ron so hard at Malfoy that Malfoy had to catch him if he didn't want him to go sprawling on the floor. Luckily, Malfoy did the decent thing for once in his life.

"Harry," Ron began.

"Potter," Malfoy began, and his eyes were horribly suspicious.

"_Go_," Harry barked, and Malfoy's Slytherin self-preservation instincts finally kicked in. He dragged Ron up the stairs despite his protests.

Harry went to answer the Floo, and his mind was already moving. Malfoy was right. Very little would persuade the Ministry to let Fleur go, and Harry wasn't about to betray that it was Ron who had brought the news, or Ron would end up in a cell beside Bill.

That meant he would have to pretend that he had somehow known about the news on his own, and offer the Ministry a bribe that was worth Fleur's freedom. And Bill's, if he was lucky.

Harry rolled his shoulders and settled them. _Well. It's not the first time that I've been a sacrifice._

He was settled and calm, ready to play the part of the Dark mastermind the Ministry had wanted to arrest for some time, when the first Auror tumbled out of the Floo.


	12. Stand and Deliver

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twelve-Stand and Deliver_

The Aurors who dragged Harry into the Ministry weren't ones he had seen before, either with Splinter or when he visited the Ministry for his Lethe tests. The leader seemed to be a man as tall as Kingsley, with a frown that darted across his face whenever he glanced at Harry. He led Harry up and down corridors, through lifts, and up a set of stairs that Harry hadn't known existed, since everyone in the Ministry seemed to use the lifts or Floo connections. They halted in front of a door made of white wood with a crescent moon carved into it.

Harry squinted. He thought he could make out facial features on the moon, a long, pointed nose and heavy eyebrows. They reminded him of someone, although he couldn't say who.

"You've done it now," the tall man muttered at Harry, and then rapped on the door in a strange sequence. When Harry looked more closely, he could see that faint silver lines divided the door into four panels, and the Auror was knocking on them in a particular order, a different number of knocks for each part.

The door opened before Harry could try to memorize the code, and they stepped into a room filled with smoke and flashing silver mirrors. Harry raised his eyebrows before he could stop himself.

"Really?" he asked, since he thought he might as well. "_Really _smoke and mirrors?"

The smoke pulled back while the Aurors were still poking him in the side as if they wanted him to be quiet. A tall figure wrapped in silver robes stepped out. Harry tensed for a moment, struck dumb. He couldn't see any face under the cowl, and while the robes didn't _look _like a Dementor's...

"A necessary artifice," said the figure, and turned to glide in front of Harry towards the back of the room. "My name is Oratory. Come with me."

The Aurors had released Harry and retreated out the door. Harry looked back just in time to see them opening it. Then he turned forwards into the smoke again, wondering how he was going to follow Oratory if he didn't want to be found.

"This way," said a voice out of the smoke, and a corner of the silvery robe curled up and beckoned, appearing almost in the corner of Harry's eye. Harry swore and hurried towards it through the mirrors, trying to ignore the flashing distraction of his own image in them.

Oratory kept moving after that, always providing enough guidance that Harry never felt completely lost, but never enough that Harry could feel confident he knew where he was going. It was still a surprise to stumble abruptly out of the mist and find himself in what looked like a perfectly normal room with a desk in the middle of it, a chair behind and a chair in front. It might have been an Auror office. Harry turned to glance over his shoulder, but the room full of smoke and mirrors had vanished.

"Yes, that's a useful trick we've perfected," said Oratory, and took a seat behind the desk. There was still nothing inside the cowl that Harry could see, but he had the impression of benevolent, unseen eyes gazing at him nevertheless. "We do keep track of your movements, you know."

"Then you would have caught me sooner," Harry said. He would still have to tailor his lies, he knew, but to this unknown person, which was going to be harder than tailoring them to Kingsley. Still, if they needed secret knowledge, he was willing to spin as many tales as it took. He folded his arms and glared at the space where the eyes _would _be. "You would have figured out my plans."

"Oh, we don't generally intervene," said the vague voice. "Now, matters have become severe enough that we have to. Won't you sit down?" It waved one hand at the chair in front of his desk.

Harry took a moment to check the chair for signs of a seat that would tilt up and dump him on the floor, or any violent spells. The voice chuckled in return. "You've become conscious that many of the tests they're performing on you for Lethe are not exactly for your benefit?" it asked, as Harry finally sat down.

Harry nodded firmly, although he hadn't known that for certain. On the other hand, he had long since come to the conclusion that a lot of the tests were looking for things like the general power of his magic instead of things that would affect his safety. "It's annoying as hell, I don't mind telling you."

"Yes, don't mind," said Oratory, and clasped his hands and leaned forwards over his desk. Harry was almost sure the voice was male, although he hadn't counted on how disconcerting it would be not to see an expression. "Now. We are not the Unspeakables, but a separate division, one committed to studying larger patterns in the wizarding world than can be found by looking at artifacts and ancient magic."

Harry blinked. "What are you, then?"

"The Ministry calls us the Unseen," said the figure. "That name will do as well as any. We are concerned because there was a war that could have destroyed our world, and now there is this paranoia that could do the same thing. We let the pattern of the war play out. With a prophecy and a Dark Lord none of us could challenge directly and Horcruxes on the field, we had no choice. But this paranoia is not necessary. It can still be changed and directed, and that is what we want to do."

Harry stared at Oratory in silent fury. On the one hand, it sounded as if these Unseen could be allies of his, if they were talking about helping.

On the other hand, if they could have made the war easier for him and had chosen not to, because of nonsense concerning "destiny" and "chosenness" and "necessity," then Harry was boiling.

"How many people could you have saved?" he finally demanded. "Maybe you couldn't do anything about the fight I had to have with Voldemort, but you could have done something about saving the people in the _Ministry_! Where you _work!_"

"Do you know why the Ministry banned weather magic?" Oratory asked.

Harry stared. "What does _that _have to do with anything?"

"You don't, then." Unconcerned with his closeness, now that he was almost leaning over the desk and threatening to poke the idiot in the chest, Oratory went on calmly. "The Ministry banned it because its patterns were too complex for individual wizards to see. They couldn't understand that shifting clouds even a little so that their daughter could have sunshine for her wedding could cause a devastating flood in the next county, or that trying to make it stop raining early could contribute to the lengthening of a drought. We came into being at the same time, in the hope that a group of wizards could study the long-term patterns and come to understand them, and perhaps use weather magic wisely again."

"But that's not what you're doing," Harry said, and gave back as hostile a stare as he could muster. Fine, he didn't know how to react to the Unseen, but whether he could try his pretense on them or had to show his real emotions, his anger would be the same.

"No," Oratory acknowledged cheerfully. "We realized there were other long-term patterns to be studied, including the waves of the future. A large number of us use Divination the way it was meant to be used, as a pattern of warnings, not of absolute knowledge. And we have seen that you stand at the fulcrum of this paranoia and the change it could make in the wizarding world, much as you stood at the fulcrum of the war."

"Lucky, lucky me," Harry muttered.

"Oh, no. You aren't particularly favored by the patterns of luck, you know."

Harry gave up on trying to make it clear what he meant, because it seemed as though the Unseen would only twist his words. "Then what do you want? Are you going to _help _me prove that the Lightfinder is just a means of showing someone's affinity for Dark and Light? Or are you going to hang around in the background and make me more paranoid?"

For some reason, those words seemed to affect Oratory when nothing else had. The figure sat up, and Harry had the feeling those invisible eyes had grown more piercing. Then the Unseen said, "That is unkind. After all, you have already been with one of our associates, and he has helped you."

"Who?" Harry asked, his mind going, absurdly, to Splinter.

"Aster Black."

"How can a _portrait _be a member of your organization?"

"Oh, it all depends on where the portrait frame is placed, and whether the knowledge of the figure in it is extensive enough to permit us to take an interest." Oratory seemed calm again. He waved one hand. "So. You have benefited from his knowledge of spells. Would you not like to do the same thing with us?"

Harry had to stop and think about it. He was still angry that this organization that seemed to be so powerful hadn't interfered in the war, or before this to stop stupid things like the imprisonment of Bill, but Malfoy would say he should be clear-headed when he made a decision, not reject things out of fury. Harry didn't want to look stupid in front of Malfoy.

"What can you offer?" he finally asked. "And is it going to be advice, or spells, or something else?"

The Unseen nodded slowly. "Good. Now you are _thinking _instead of merely reacting." Harry bit his lips and held still. "Even better." Oratory leaned back. "Now, why did you come here? It was convenient for us, because we could intercept you, but what was running through your head when you came to the Ministry?"

"They would know that someone had come through my Floo," said Harry. "Or that I had used it to go somewhere. I was going to tell them that I knew about them capturing my friend Fleur, who was only trying to free her mate from prison."

"_Only_."

Harry ignored that, and kept speaking. "I was going to tell them that they could condemn me, and I would confess to whatever they wanted, in exchange for them freeing Bill and Fleur."

"They've been telling the public that you're a Dark wizard all along. What could you offer them that would be different from what they already have?"

Harry breathed to calm his anger, and replied, "I've been resisting it, somewhat. They've already sent Aurors to my house to look around for whatever subversive book I've been reading. The tests that they said are for my safety before they use Lethe on me have got harder. I would tell them I'd cease that resistance and give interviews about my Darkness of my own free will. I haven't done that so far, because they wouldn't let me in front of a reporter."

"Because they didn't know what you might say, and you are a terrible liar. Even the lies that you've tried to tell me, you can only do by omitting something." Oratory tapped his fingers in a pattern that made his desk glow. Harry only caught a glimpse of spirals and shapes that looked like crescent moons before the Unseen snatched his attention back. "That was a good plan, so far as it went. But then the wizarding world falls into chaos, and that is annoying."

_They really must be detached from the world, if they can think of chaos as merely annoying, _Harry thought. _Maybe every last one of them is a portrait._

"So this is what you will do instead," said Oratory.

"Only if you can guarantee that my friends and allies are going to be safe," said Harry, and didn't care that those invisible eyes on his face now felt hot enough to make his scar smoke. "I won't do anything that hurts them."

Oratory had a staring contest with him. This time, Harry thought, not seeing the face was actually an advantage. It was still unnerving, but not in the specific way that seeing a glare or a look of poisonous hatred for his Dark affinity would be.

"The least annoying pattern needs most of your friends and allies," the Unseen finally conceded. "Fine. You want your Weasley friends freed?"

"That's the most immediate goal," said Harry. "That's the one I was prepared to sacrifice myself for."

"Only a small goal, considering what your compliance is worth to the Ministry," said Oratory. "They would have accepted your bargain, because the Savior condemning himself out of his own mouth is one of the major things they want."

"Are you going to advise me to drive a harder bargain, then?" Harry wondered why the Unseen had brought him here if that was the case. Diverting the Aurors, and revealing to at least a few of them where Harry had been taken, didn't seem worth it for a plan that small.

"No," said Oratory. "I advise you to present the face of someone struggling with his own Dark affinity. Tell them that you hear voices in your head pulling you towards the Dark and voices that pull you towards the Light. You want to be Light again. That is Lethe's purpose, you know, to change someone's magic."

Harry swallowed. He had suspected that, had never really thought once he learned what the Lightfinder did that Lethe would scrub his soul clean, but it was another thing to hear it stated so baldly.

"But how can I do that, when I can't lie well? And why would it convince them anyway? It sounds like a childish excuse."

"Because," Oratory said, "unlike most other people who might tell this ploy, you _did _have someone's soul wrapped around yours. Yes, you will need to tell them about the Horcrux," he added, when Harry opened his mouth to protest. "You can tell them that the voice of the Dark is the voice of Voldemort, and the voice of the Light comes from your own, uncorrupted soul. Portray yourself as struggling with this last remnant of the one who called himself the Dark Lord. They will buy it."

They might at that, Harry conceded slowly. They were still more afraid of Voldemort than anything else. The Lightfinder had been created in the first place to try to find wizards like Voldemort before they grew too strong. Fear was guiding the Ministry's decisions right now. An even more profound fear would probably seem all the more convincing for that.

"As for how you can lie to them," said Oratory, and brought something out. One moment his hand didn't hold it, and the next it was there. Harry tried to conceal his jump, though from the way that Oratory didn't bother hiding a smile in his voice, he wasn't entirely successful. "Here. This amulet will fool those who hear you into thinking you speak the truth. Whatever they want most _not _to hear is what they will hear. And with the Ministry's current mood..."

Harry lifted the amulet up slowly. It looked like a carving of golden wood, set with a single eye that had long rays like the sun's extending out from it to the edge of the amulet. The chain itself was also wood, made of fine links that didn't seem to have any join. "What about someone with Legilimency? And how will I hide the amulet?"

"Good," said Oratory. When Harry shot him a look, he had the impression of a smile returned from under the hood. "You are more intelligent than Aster implied you were. The amulet uses the fear magic associated with it to deflect Legilimency as well, and makes the mind-reader's fear too intense to go further. Put on the amulet for the answer to your other question."

Harry spent another moment studying Oratory, wondering why in the world he wanted to trust the bugger. But on the other hand, it wasn't as though he had come here with a safer plan. His would have ended his freedom. This promised a way around that, a way that would let him still help Bill and Fleur, and maybe Malfoy and the others, too.

Harry slung the amulet around his neck. The wooden links immediately glowed, a soft, silvery light that Harry had to admire. Then they pivoted around each other, turning as though to face him. Harry stared down at them and waited for them to stop turning.

It didn't really happen. Instead, the links began to fade. Harry breathed in and out, experimentally. The links were still there; he could feel them pressing against his neck. But they didn't rattle when he moved, and there was no sign either of them or the slight bulge he knew the amulet must be making beneath his shirt to the searching eye.

"That's _brilliant_," Harry breathed.

"We rather thought so." Oratory waited with his hands clasped until Harry stopped toying with the amulet and looked up again. "We require a price for this assistance, of course."

Harry nodded. For once, he didn't feel the bitterness that he had started experiencing when he realized how the Ministry was using him, and even towards Dumbledore at the very end. Oratory and the Unseen wanted something; they were providing something. With help, this could be a good alliance, the way Harry thought he was forging with Malfoy.

_Well…perhaps not exactly like the one with Malfoy. _Harry had to admit that so far, Oratory, and even the other Unseen whose purpose he had explained, didn't interest him the way Malfoy did.

"We wish you to resist Lethe."

Harry blinked. "But won't that tip them off? I've cooperated with the tests so far, and if I'm going to lie to them about being influenced by a piece of Voldemort's soul still, then I'll have to do that some more. I have to pretend that I want to be Light again."

Oratory made an impatient motion with his hand. "Not the tests. We wish you to resist Lethe itself, when they try to put you into the machine." He seemed to see the next question dawning on Harry's face, because he added gravely, "Not the Ministry Aurors. Let them push you into the machine, if you must. But resist the machine when it tries to change you. _Do not let it_."

Harry paused. This seemed too good to be true, at last. He had no opinion on a lot of what Oratory had told him; it wasn't like he had ever known about weather magic being banned, or what "real" Divination consisted of. But this…

"You mean that you want me to do something I would do anyway?" he asked.

Oratory touched his hood for a moment, as though he was considering pushing it back and letting Harry look at his face, but in the end, he dropped his hand and left the hood in place. He did lower his voice in emphasis. "I think that you would have sacrificed your magic and your affinity if you thought your friends required it of you. What did you come here to do?"

"Not that," Harry declared, shaking his head, but then sighed. "All right, something not much less than that."

Oratory nodded. "Then go and use the amulet." He stood up abruptly, and the smoke was suddenly there, snaking through the room and around the desk as if it had never left. "I promise you it will work exactly as I explained. Don't worry about the Aurors who escorted you; they are some of ours, and know better than to chat." He stepped away from the desk. "When we need you again, we will contact you."

"Even though I haven't agreed to resist Lethe yet?"

Oratory paused and looked back at him. "You gave your agreement when the smoke appeared. I would have stayed here and conversed with you longer if you hadn't. The mirrors know, and the smoke knows."

Then he vanished, trailing into the flash of mist and light, and Harry found himself standing in what looked like a normal corridor of the Auror division. He turned around slowly, although he didn't expect to see Oratory behind him, or the mirror that he thought he had come through.

In front of him was Splinter, who gave him a harassed look, as though he'd been waiting hours for Harry.

"Come on, then," he said, and jerked his head. "If you tried to open your Floo to go somewhere, then we need to talk to you about restrictions."

Harry relaxed. As he had thought, the Ministry had only set up alarms to warn them if the Floo was opened, not to tell them whether someone was coming or going. They hadn't been able to distinguish Ron's entrance from his own attempt at an exit.

"And about Fleur and Bill Weasley," he murmured.

Splinter paused and rolled one eye back at him. "Then you need to talk Minister Shacklebolt about that. I only handle Lethe."

Harry refrained from raising a hand to touch his amulet, but only barely. "I'd like to talk to him. And you. About the voices I've heard that are tempting me to the Dark and changing my behavior lately." He stepped closer and whispered, "Trying to convince me to abandon everything I hold dear. I think it's Voldemort."

The look of terror on Splinter's face was heart-warming. Harry bit his lip so as not to laugh, and thought Splinter would give himself whiplash from nodding.

"Come on, then!" Splinter scurried off towards a corridor Harry didn't recognize. "The Minister will have to be called right away. We'll need to—"

Harry tuned out the rest of it. The amulet had worked as promised. So far, the Unseen were his allies.

_But only so far._


	13. Battles Averted

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirteen—Battles Averted_

"So. You're _here_."

Draco tried to keep from snapping as he concentrated on the book in front of him. It was one that Astoria had brought him early that morning, commenting that it seemed like it might help, but the handwriting was so cramped it was difficult for her to read. Draco had immediately seized it. A handwritten journal—probably—could aid them a lot more than a book other people would also have on the shelves of their libraries.

"Malfoy? Are you paying attention to me?"

_More than I'd like, _Draco thought, but he shut the book and turned around. "I am," he said, and kept his face empty. "What do you want?"

"To know why you're here." Weasley stood with his arms folded near the doorway. He hadn't even looked around at all the books on the shelves, which Draco would have thought was the _point _of a library you didn't visit often. He looked straight into Draco's face as if that would tell him what treachery Draco was plotting next. Draco found his temper rising, and had to place one hand on the book to remind himself of what was important. "Why would you join Harry's effort to—to—"

"You don't know, do you?" Draco had to smile. "Granger is working with us, and you didn't know."

Weasley glared at him. "I did know. It's the reason that I wasn't writing to Harry very often and staying away from him. Hermione wanted to save me to be a spy on the inside. But after the Ministry arrested Bill and then Fleur, they probably wouldn't trust me, either." He turned to the side as if he was going to finally examine a shelf, but Draco was keeping one eye on the wand he clutched. "I just thought you were living somewhere else."

Draco tried to remember if he had ever told Granger outright that he and the others were staying here. Maybe not. But Weasley was still upset over nothing. "Potter has plenty of room in the house. It makes for a convenient meeting place."

"And your ancestors lived here, so that's something, right?" Weasley sounded as if he was jeering, now.

Draco froze for a second, wondering how Weasley knew about Aster. But then Weasley turned around and jabbed a finger at him, and crowed, "I _knew _it!", and Draco suspected this was about something else.

"You knew _what_?" he asked coldly, almost wishing he had simply concentrated on the book and let Weasley's words wash over him. He didn't need this, not on top of the way that Potter had simply leaped into the Aurors' arms and let them carry him away. Plan or not, Draco doubted Potter had his own good in mind half the time.

"I knew you wanted to take the Black house away from Harry!" Weasley moved slowly into the middle of the room, and Draco recognized a battle stance. Well, he thought Weasley had started Auror training. "You wanted to inherit it when Sirius died, and probably that crazy aunt of yours—"

"Don't talk about her," Draco said automatically. It wasn't like he mourned Bellatrix, but her name brought up a whole surge of emotions that he wasn't ready to deal with. She was the one who had taught him Occlumency and torn into his mind, and she was also the one who had tortured Fenrir Greyback once for having the temerity to touch Draco. She was too crazy for Draco to know _what _he felt.

"I won't," said Weasley. "You probably hoped she would inherit the Black fortune and leave it to you, and she didn't. That hurts, huh?"

Draco wondered what Weasley would say if he told him that inheriting the house, with its impenetrable wards, would have been far more convenient than inheriting a fortune, but the wondering was pointless, since it wasn't like Draco would tell him. Draco shut the book and stood up. "Excuse me," he said. "I'm off to find a quieter place to read."

"If you're planning to betray Harry, then I need to warn him," Weasley said, and stepped in front of Draco when he tried to leave the library.

Draco boiled over before he could stop himself. "You _idiot, _you don't even know if Potter's coming back from the Ministry! And without his help, I don't have anywhere to go, and there's no—there's _no_ rebellion, there's no chance for me to do anything but flee Britain or let them put me through the Lightfinder, and then there's no _anything_. Shut up! You don't _matter _next to that!"

Weasley stared at him in what seemed such surprise that Draco was viciously glad he'd said the words, although Potter might be angry at him later. Then again, that whole thing hinged on Potter's survival.

"You really don't want the house?" Weasley asked, and stepped absently in front of Draco again when Draco tried to make his way around him.

"_No_," said Draco, and glared hard enough that he thought Weasley either had to go for his wand or sue for peace, which he did by lifting his hands.

"Well. All right, then." Weasley scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "But why did you come to Harry at all?"

Draco sighed. He wanted to be alone and read the book, or at least with Pansy and read the book. But he thought that Weasley might leave him alone if he answered the question honestly. "Because I knew he was already under suspicion from the Ministry, and I wouldn't draw more if I went to him. But he's also powerful enough to fight this—_if_ he gets his head out of his arse and decides to stop overreacting to every little thing."

Weasley flushed. "My sister-in-law being imprisoned isn't a little thing."

"Well, it is next to the whole of Britain and the loads of people who might be imprisoned on even less justification," said Draco, unimpressed. "You might not want to hear it, but that's the way it is."

"Harry can't be the one to stop that, though." Weasley shook his head. "It was one thing when he was facing Voldemort. That had a prophecy behind it, and Harry was the only one who could destroy him. But there's no prophecy this time, and Harry's just one person. He deserves a holiday from saving the world, too."

"Excuse me for not thinking that," said Draco. It at least confirmed that Weasley wasn't going to turn against Potter any time soon, but turning against Potter wasn't the same as supporting Draco—at least not if Weasley decided it wasn't. "He's the one who has the political power from the last world-saving adventure he was on. And the Ministry isn't going to leave him alone, anyway."

"So he was a convenience." Weasley's eyes were blazing again.

"He was someone who would listen to me," said Draco, as bluntly as he could. Maybe Weasley would back off if he said that. "He's someone who could help me, and that's the way it was. He agreed, too."

He finally brushed past Weasley, and went up to the room that Potter had given him. He lay back on the bed, arranged his pillows so he could prop his head up at a comfortable angle and read the book at the same time, and tried to go back to reading.

But it was no good. His mind was blazing the way it had when he was younger and had a violent illness, various images of what might happen to—or without—Potter coiling through his sight like fever dreams.

Everything really was at an end if this was the end of Potter.

_Come back safe, Potter._

* * *

><p>"It wasn't you, Harry," said Kingsley, and caught his hand. "I knew it couldn't be. I <em>knew <em>it had something to do with Voldemort."

Harry gave him a small smile and looked down at the part of his chest where the amulet should have hung. It wasn't there; of course it wasn't, given that the Unseen spell still held and it was invisible. But it did make him want to touch it and thank the Unseen for their help. Lying to Kingsley would have been a lot harder without it.

Of course, that only made him wonder exactly what price the Unseen were going to demand for their aid, sooner or later.

Kingsley interrupted again before Harry could pursue the thought to its logical conclusion. "And that means we can continue the tests but change them," he said, and sighed out, sitting down in the leather chair behind his desk and looking at Harry with pleasure and satisfaction that made Harry want to sigh himself. Kingsley didn't really want to believe Harry was evil, that much was clear; he had done it only because the evidence seemed overwhelming.

_But he never thought that the Lightfinder showing a dark color wasn't the same thing as finding a taint in the soul._

However, if Harry was going to use that perception to fool Kingsley and Splinter and other people, now wasn't the time to complain about it. "What are you going to change the tests to?" he asked quietly, and took the chair on the other side of Kingsley's desk when Kingsley gestured to him.

Splinter, who had hovered nearby and listened with wide eyes while Harry told the whole story of the Horcrux and the shred of Voldemort's soul still beckoning to him, interrupted at that point. "We need to make sure they don't damage _your _magic. What we need to damage is the piece of soul that's hiding in you."

"Exactly," said Kingsley, nodding. "Before, we knew that being free of the Dark affinity was worth any price, but there was a chance that Lethe would have damaged your magic."

Harry swallowed back the horror that gripped him. No matter what he said, he was certain, they wouldn't understand it. For one thing, they had both grown up in the wizarding world. They had never lived a time of their lives without magic, and didn't understand what it would mean to Harry to go back to that kind of existence.

For another, Harry needed to encourage this kind of idea so they could continue with the plan. It was just hard to remember that, sometimes, when he knew he had people hiding at home and in prison who could be benefited if Kingsley would only _see sense._

"And—and you'll let Bill and Fleur go?" he asked timidly, looking from Kingsley's face to Splinter's.

Splinter didn't say anything, but looked at the Minister. Kingsley sighed and touched his face. "You have to understand, Harry. Attacking Azkaban is no small thing, isn't something we can let go, in case other people decide that the rules don't apply to them, either."

Harry blinked rapidly and sat up. "But don't you _know _that Fleur is a Veela and was attacking Azkaban because Bill is her mate and she needs him?" In truth, he wasn't sure how full-Veela Fleur actually was, but it sure made a good excuse, and it probably had its roots in the truth. "I thought there were exceptions in the laws for Veela who needed their mates back and did something that would usually be considered criminal. After all, they _have _to have their mates back to survive. It's not like they can help it."

Kingsley blinked. "I didn't think she was as much Veela as all that. I did work with her and Bill in the Order for a while. I think I would have known—"

"Well, her attacking Azkaban shows it, doesn't it?" Harry demanded. "Do you think she would have done something so mental when you knew her?"

Kingsley hesitated for long moments. Again, Splinter didn't say anything. Harry thought he didn't care that much about things like people in Azkaban, except for how they affected Harry. _His _focus was Harry and Harry's magic.

_Maybe. _Harry wanted to use Aster's spell to find out, but now wasn't the time or the place, when he was on the verge of convincing Kingsley.

"That doesn't account for Weasley's initial imprisonment, of course," Kingsley said at last. "Or the color he tested in the Lightfinder."

_He's in prison because your lot put him there. _But Harry knew better than to say something like that. He thought he would have even if it wasn't for the warning and help of the Unseen, and the ability to lie. He spent a moment fidgeting with his eyes on his hands, and then stood up and said in some agitation, "Well, if I was tainted by being a Horcrux, what do you think _he _was?"

Kingsley looked at him with his mouth open for a second, as though he was going to ask what Harry meant, but then he closed it again and looked wise. "The scars on his face."

"Exactly," Harry sighed, and sat down again. "When a werewolf like Fenrir Greyback attacks you and scars your face…" He shrugged. "I'd like to see how pure even someone who tested red would be, if that happened to them."

Kingsley looked as though someone had slapped him and he thought he deserved it. "I can't believe I was so blind," he whispered. "I never even considered that explanation. Or the one that makes sense of your color, either." He looked at Harry intently.

"How could anyone know what I was?" Harry shook his head. "Dumbledore specifically said that I couldn't tell anyone except Ron and Hermione. And it was a jolly good job Voldemort didn't know, or he wouldn't have cast that Killing Curse at me."

"The Killing Curse should have destroyed the Horcrux," Splinter announced at that moment. "Shouldn't it?"

"I don't really know," said Harry, and let his face fall. "I know that's what Dumbledore _hoped _would happen. But even though I don't feel like I have a connection to some separate being anymore, I can still hear it. Whispering."

He shivered violently with disgust, not even having to feign it. He didn't _want _to be reminded of the taint on his soul, and what he had been for most of his life without knowing it. If there had been a way to burn out the feeling of being a Horcrux without touching anything else, then he would have taken it in a heartbeat.

"Yes, we can't take any chances," said Splinter, and he looked pleased with himself again. "Perhaps we should concentrate our efforts first on those touched or tainted by the Dark, and then we can help those unfortunate souls."

"And will you release Bill and Fleur?" Harry made appealing eyes at Kingsley again. "They really won't get better if they're in prison, and Fleur is shut away from her mate, and Bill is left alone with those scars festering on his face. And maybe Greyback's voice whispering to him."

Kingsley looked at Splinter, but he was writing notes down, and seemed as uninterested in the fate of anyone who wasn't Harry as ever. Kingsley faced Harry, looking thoughtful. "If you're willing to sponsor their continued good behavior, Harry…"

"Yes." Harry didn't even have to think about it. "Of course I will. I can advise them to stay in Shell Cottage for right now and not venture out in public the way I do, for example. That would probably help."

"It would soothe any public outrage. When we explain what happened, of course, and make the public see they were only innocent victims, then the outrage should ease."

Harry had his private doubts about that, with the fear the Ministry had stirred up that there were Dark wizards walking around, hidden, everywhere someone looked, but if he had tried to argue with Kingsley and Splinter about that, he would have failed. He only bowed his head and looked as repentant as possible. "I hope it will, sir."

"Good," said Kingsley, and there were lines of tension about his face that had been erased completely. "Then you'll go with Splinter and do the last tests that we need before we'll be able to complete Lethe?" He smiled winsomely at Harry. "I'm not above begging, if I have to, but I don't think I will. You understand the necessity for this, and for making sure that we get rid of that piece of soul in your head."

Harry resigned himself to it. It wasn't any different from what he would have spent most of the day doing, anyway, if he hadn't run into the Unseen and had simply marched into Splinter's hands again. "Yes, sir."

"Good." Kingsley stood up and came around the desk. Harry thought he would just walk out the door, but instead, he gripped Harry's shoulder in a crushing way and bent down to hug him. "You don't know how happy and relieved you've made me," he whispered. "Yes, it's horrifying to know that You-Know-Who has been affecting you this long, but at least you're going to come back." His hands tightened, and he stood there for a second until Splinter cleared his throat. Then he turned and walked out of the room without looking at anyone again.

Harry stood up, blinking, and turned to Splinter, who gave him a somber glance. "We need to do some recalculations on Lethe and make sure that we have it right," he muttered, as if that was Harry's fault. "You do realize how inconvenient this is for us? Why didn't you tell us about this Horcrux thing from the beginning?"

Exhausted, more than he'd thought he would be from the simple effort of lying, Harry told the truth. "Because I didn't want people staring at me and thinking I'm mental."

Splinter's face softened a little. "Better to be mental than Dark," he said, and then gestured commandingly at the door. Harry followed him out it, one hand on his wand. If he could cast the spell that would tell him what Splinter was really thinking about him, the spell Aster had shown him and Malfoy…

But Aurors joined them beyond the doors, although they didn't surround Harry as closely as he thought they would have a day ago, and Harry dropped his hand away from his wand with a sigh. Perhaps he would just have to wait and hope he could find out the truth later.

* * *

><p>Draco spun around when he heard the door shut below him. Weasley, who'd taken to lurking across the library and toying with a book as if he wanted to convince Draco he could understand Dark magical theory after Draco came back to the library, stood up at once.<p>

Draco swallowed, but it made his throat feel painful, and he shook his head in irritation. He walked over to the edge of the staircase and waited for some sign that this was safe, instead of Aurors invading the house.

He heard Kreacher's obsequious questions, and relaxed. He opened his mouth to call to Potter, but Weasley rushed up beside him and interrupted him. "Harry! Did you get Bill and Fleur out, mate?"

Potter paused in taking off his cloak below them and looked up with a faint smile. Draco rubbed one shoulder where the tension had knotted painfully. He really hadn't thought he would see that smile again.

And he would have missed it. He could admit that to himself, if he wasn't going to admit it to anyone else.

"Yes," Potter said. "I convinced them that Fleur only attacked Azkaban because she was a Veela who needed a mate, and that Bill wasn't Dark, he was just influenced by the werewolf scars on his face." He hesitated, looked once at Draco in a minutely probing way that Draco resented, and then added, "And I told them I wasn't Dark, I was just influenced by the Horcrux that lingered in my soul. I told them I could still hear Voldemort's voice whispering to me and tempting me to evil."

"That," said Draco, and surprised himself with the supreme coldness of his voice, "was perhaps the worst thing you could have done. Now they'll distrust all the Dark wizards even more. Now they'll continue to think of Dark wizards as evil."

"They already think that," Weasley began, with a scowl at Draco that seemed to erase the hours they had spent in relative, tense peace.

"It was a tactic that I didn't really want to use, but it does give us one useful thing," said Potter, shaking his head. "A spy in the inside ranks. Kingsley's going to trust me now and be calmer around me. I'm not sure about Splinter, but at least Kingsley won't hide information from me and think of me as an enemy. And that could be useful."

Draco stood rigidly still for a moment, and then inclined his head. At least it _seemed _as if Potter wasn't denying his own affinity and stretching things out in an unacceptable way. Draco could accept that, as long as it didn't come to denial.

Weasley was probably also right that no one in the Ministry would accept Potter's explanation of Dark not being evil right now, and would only have regarded him as more untrustworthy if he tried to push it. But Draco was free to dislike the measure even while he acknowledged the necessity.

As Draco watched, Potter's hand rose as if to toy with something around his neck. He flinched a second lat and lowered his hand back to his side. That made Draco wonder what in the world hung there. He couldn't see anything, but Potter hadn't made the gesture at his neck before he left.

Weasley was chattering to Potter about affairs concerning the rest of his family that Draco had no interest in. He held Potter's eyes for one moment before he withdrew to the library.

He was sure something had happened. But although he listened to the rising and falling tones of their voices, or rather Weasley's voice with Potter's calm replies, he heard nothing that sounded like an explanation.

That meant Potter was hiding it from his friend. That could be fine, as long as he didn't think that he could hide it from Draco.

In the end, the respite proved a good thing, because Draco managed to stop the inexplicable shaking of his hands that had plagued him since the moment of his seeing Potter. He had felt that way a few times when the Carrows had taken one of his friends into their offices in Hogwarts, and Draco had thought it would be the last time he'd ever see them.

He'd felt that way when the Aurors came through Astoria's door.

It suggested certain things about Potter's importance to him that Draco did not like. Of course, it was mixed up with Potter's importance to the resistance movement they were launching, but he still didn't like it.

He was still thinking about it when he heard a movement near the door and looked up. Potter was there, with Pansy right behind him. Pansy came over to take the chair near Draco, wrinkling her nose.

"You have something around your neck that irritates my senses, Potter," she said. "What is it?"

"Yes," Draco said, holding Potter's gaze, "tell me."

"_Us_," Pansy corrected, but Potter responded more to Draco's entreaty than to hers, Draco thought, as he nodded and moved towards the chair in front of Draco.

"Yes," he said. "You deserve to know."

Draco slowly nodded. _As long as he thinks that_


End file.
